Medical aspirants from Bengal urge Centre for error-free NEET paper
Kolkata: Medical aspirants from Bengal who will appear for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) next year with Bengali as the medium of the examination have urged the Center to prepare an error-free question paper.
The Bengali translation of the NEET question paper was full of errors this year. As a result a number of students had faced unprecedented difficulties while appearing for the examination.
Following the question paper fiasco, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has been assigned to conduct the national level medical entrance examination next year.
Many of the city based doctors and experts had repeatedly urged the Centre not to conduct a single entrance examination throughout the country as there are socio-economic differences among people belonging to different states and there are many state boards. But the Centre tried to conduct the NEET hastily as a result of which many medical aspirants from various states opting vernacular languages as the medium of examination remained deprived, experts felt.
Dr A K Maity, a city based doctor and an expert in the field of medical education in the country, wrote to the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of the state pointing out how the Bengali translation of the NEET question papers were full of errors in detail. It was also alleged that there were as many as 181 mistakes in
the paper of 180 questions.
The errors have become evident after the Calcutta High Court had sent some samples of question papers to the professors of Calcutta University for examining the mistakes. This happened after one Washim Akram Hossain, a medical aspirant moved the court seeking justice.
CU professors pointed out the errors in translation and submitted a report to the court. After going through the report, the court issued order to provide some grace marks to
the victim.
The victim's counsel Alauddin Mondal said they would appeal to the division bench of the Calcutta High Court. He also said there were errors or ambiguity in 98 questions but only five questions were examined. If all the other questions were examined the candidate might have got more marks. Dr Maity said students cannot be deprived on the basis of their language. The NTA which will carry out the examination next year will be cautious while preparing the question papers.
