Doctor writes to prez urging intervention to stop NEET implementation

A city doctor has written to the President of India Pranab Mukherjee seeking his intervention to stop the implementation of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2017, the national level undergraduate medical entrance examination conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

In his letter to the President, Dr AK Maity, a city-based doctor has argued that the CBSE has no right to conduct the nationwide medical entrance examination. He said that the Centre formulated a law to conduct the NEET in 2016 and asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) to take the decision on how the examination would be conducted and who would conduct the examination.

The highest regulating body will also decide what would be the pass marks to qualify the entrance examination. The MCI was also asked to publish a gazette notification, thereby attributing the power of conducting the examination on a particular agency. But the MCI has never given power to the CBSE to carry out the examination by publishing any gazette notification since the enactment of law to conduct the NEET –UG 2017. The MCI was also asked to formulate a policy in this regard.

Dr Maity said that the MCI did not assign the CBSE to conduct the examination after the promulgation of the law in 2016. MCI is saying that they have given the CBSE the power to conduct the entrance examination but it has not published any notification assigning the job to the CBSE since the law was formulated by the Centre in 2016.

Therefore, the CBSE has no right to conduct the examination. The MCI, however, says that they have assigned the CBSE to carry out the job around 5 years ago.

It is not possible as MCI was asked by the Centre to formulate policy on the examination after a Bill was passed in the Parliament in 2016, Dr Maity maintained.

The letter says: "The CBSE has no power to hold NEET (UG) - 2017 examination. The minimum qualifying marks 50 percentile for unreserved (UR) category and 40 percentile for SC/ST/OBC categories in NEET (UG) - 2017 are not legal."

The NEET 2017 examination is scheduled to take place on May 7 throughout the country in which around 11.5 lakh medical aspirants will take part. In West Bengal, there are around 75,000 candidates who will appear in the national level medical entrance examination this year.