Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that railway recruitment exams would also be conducted in Urdu, Jammu and Kashmir’s official language, in a move that will benefit thousands of job aspirants across the state. She also extended student concessions to higher madrasas.

“We have decided to conduct railway recruitment examinations in Urdu also,” Banerjee said. “Till now these examinations were held in English and Hindi. I have made Urdu compulsory along with other regional languages.”

She was speaking at a function at Wanpoh in Anantnag to inaugurate the 18-km rail link between Anantnag and Qazigund. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi inaugurated the link, thus completing the 118-km railway line in the Valley, connecting the north Kashmir town of Baramulla to Qazigund, the southern-most tip of the Valley. The link is important especially as it could take passengers close to the Jawahar tunnel, which is the only exit-entry road route to Kashmir.

In an effort to reach out to the people, Banerjee also tried her Urdu. As she spoke, the audience broke into laughter when she got the grammar wrong. She even recited a few Urdu couplets. “Kashmir is the heart of India and it is close to my heart,” she said, assuring that the promises in the Rail Budget would be fulfilled.

Banerjee’s Cabinet colleagues from J&K, Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad, demanded that a rail link be established to connect other towns, especially tourist resorts. “There is a need to link places like Pahalgam with trains to boost tourism. We also request that the rail link be extended to places like Kupwara from Baramulla,” Farooq Abdullah said.

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