CHENNAI: Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudy on Thursday said that the State government has planned to increase Tamil medium courses at Anna University as the students would be given 20% priority in the State government jobs.

After conducting a review meeting with the Anna University staff, he said that at present Tamil medium courses in engineering were available only in the Civil and Mechanical streams. "In these two courses, only 30 seats each were available for the students", he said adding "as priority was given to Tamil medium in the engineering courses, we are planning to increase the seats to 60 each in those courses".

Ponmudy also said that the Higher Education Department is also planning to introduce Tamil medium in Computer Science and Electronics courses.

"More than 70 textbooks were translated into the Tamil language in this regard", he added.

The minister said that Anna University was instructed to encourage its affiliated colleges to start Tamil medium engineering courses by giving proper training to the faculties of that institution accordingly.