MAKE COMMON PAPER FOR ALL NEET ASPIRANTS, SC TELLS CBSE

NEW DELHI: There should be a common question paper for all aspirants taking NEET exam — a common window test for private and government medical colleges — the Supreme Court said on Thursday.

A bench headed by justice Dipak Misra asked CBSE to explain how it proposes to have identical questions as it pulled up the board for setting different papers for students taking NEET in regional languages.

“There should be one question paper for all aspirants. The main paper can be in English and questions can be translated into regional languages,” the bench told CBSE lawyer, additional solicitor general Maninder Singh. CBSE was asked to set out in its affidavit how it will carry out NEET in the future while ensuring the difficulty level in questions is maintained.

The three-judge bench was hearing a petition filed by NGO Sankalp Charitable Trust on whose plea SC had last year ruled that NEET would be the single-window exam to admit medical students in all colleges.

The petitioner’s lawyer, senior advocate Indira Jaising, said the standard of question papers in English and regional languages was different. She cited data and ratio between the number of students who took NEET in English/Hindi and the equivalent ratio with respect to students who qualified in support of her submission. She argued that questions in regional languages were not identical to questions in Hindi and English and there was a difference in difficulty level.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) informed court that questions were first prepared in English and then translated into Hindi. Since experts were not available to translate questions, different questions with similar difficulty level were set.

The court listed the matter for hearing on October 10.