Ahmedabad: Seven years ago, 60,000 students in Gujarat sat NEET in Gujarati. This year, fewer than 50,000 did. Educators attribute the trend to the growing preference for English-medium education, the dominance of English medical terminology, and the lack of Gujarati reference books and study material.Coaching institutes also report a shortage of teachers capable of teaching NEET subjects in Gujarati.Even as numbers fall, Gujarati remains the second most preferred regional language for NEET across India. In 2026, Gujarati registrations comfortably outpaced Bengali (38,577), Tamil (29,845), and Assamese (2,147) — trailing only Hindi at 3.4 lakh.The reasons are practical, said experts. “Gujarati-medium admissions are reducing overall while admissions are rising in English-medium schools,” said Govind Tiwari, a teacher who owns and teaches at a coaching centre.
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He added, “Students find it easier to prepare in English as they eventually study medicine and practice the profession using English terminology.”Besides, much of the study and reference material for NEET preparation is available only in English, said Prakash Patel, a NEET aspirant.Patel said, “Few teachers can teach NEET subjects effectively in Gujarati. Owing to urban influence, many students prefer to study and take coaching in English.”Even students who persist with Gujarati find themselves reaching for English resources before long. Om Prakash Maheshwari, a biology teacher with 16 years of experience, has watched the Gujarati-to-English shift up close.“Day by day the number of English-medium students is increasing, because they have to rely on English resources even when preparing for the Gujarati-medium exam,” he said.The linguistic shift is playing out alongside a worrying contraction in Gujarat’s overall exam performance. In 2025, 81,605 candidates from Gujarat sat NEET and 50,040 qualified.By 2026, the number of examinees dropped to 79,190 — and qualifiers fell sharply to 38,146. Whether the two trends are connected is not established, but the direction of both is the same.BOXNEET candidate registrations by language (2024–2026)Language202420252026English18.9L18.2L18LHindi3.6L3.3L3.4LGujarati58,83853,02549,647Bengali48,26438,24238,577Tamil36,33526,58029,845Assamese3,7692,4782,147Telugu1,6839071,339Marathi1,7599271,144Urdu1,545943919Malayalam958481787
