Calcutta HC seeks clarification from CBSE on NEET Bengali paper fiasco

Kolkata: Calcutta High Court has sought clarification from the CBSE in connection with the errors that were there in the Bengali version of the NEET question paper this year.

The development took place after a writ petition was filed at the Calcutta High Court displaying the errors in the Bengali version of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) question paper.

Apala Debnath, a medical aspirant filed the petition drawing the attention of the court to the ambiguity and huge number of mistakes of the paper.

The petitioner brought to the notice that there were 180 mistakes out of 180 questions in the Bengali version of the NEET question paper.

The medical aspirants, who appeared for the examination with Bengali as the medium, could not attend the question paper properly as it was full of errors and ambiguity.

In many questions, the Bengali translation was incomplete.

After a recent hearing, the Calcutta High Court directed the CBSE & others to reserve an MBBS seat for the petitioner and also directed the respondents, Director of NEET & others to clarify about those 180 mistakes in total in the question paper.

Md Alauddin Mandal, a lawyer who moved the Writ petition in the court said it was not possible for the Bengali students to finish all answers within 3 hours as they had to compare the correctness of all the 180 questions with the English version. The petitioner also raised questions on the role of the CBSE that conducted the examination.

"The future of Bengali medium candidates is hanging in air as there were so many errors. The CBSE should conduct re-examination or give grace marks to the candidates who faced inconvenience due to the mistakes in the Bengali version of the NEET question paper," Mandal said.

It was alleged that neither the Centre nor the CBSE took any initiatives in this regard, even after Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee

wrote to the Union Human Resources Development Ministry urging them for a re-examination.

Some city doctors also wrote to the Chief Minister and Prime Minister seeking their intervention in this regard. Chief Minister Banerjee acted promptly and wrote to the ministry but no steps have been taken so far in this regard.