Kolkata: Some of the city doctors and the medical aspirants from the state have written to the President of India Ram Nath Kovind, seeking his intervention in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) question paper fiasco in the state, due to which many Bengali medium candidates have failed to get desired results in the national level medical entrance examination.
The doctors and medical aspirants drew the President's attention to the Bengali version of the NEET question paper, that had created a furore across the state as the Bengali translations in the question paper were full of errors.
It has been pointed out in the letter that the Bengali medium candidates were deprived due to innumerable errors in the Bengali translation.
It was stated that there were altogether 180 errors in the Bengali version of the NEET 2018 question paper. The medical aspirants have also made a fervent appeal to the President to take some steps, so that Bengali medium students are not deprived only because they opted for Bengali as the medium of examination.
The Centre had made the IMC Act 2016 to conduct this examination. The NEET examination was conducted in 9 regional languages, along with English and Hindi this year. But there were many irregularities and mistakes found in the Bengali version of the question paper. The matter has already been brought to the notice of the Union HRD minister, Union Health minister and NEET authorities, but no steps have been taken so far.
It may be mentioned here that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had also written to the HRD Ministry, demanding re-examination for the students who were not able to attempt the questions due to no fault of theirs.
The doctors also raised questions on why Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which was assigned to conduct the examination, did not take precautionary measures especially after the previous year's incident, when standard of questions in the Bengali version was much more difficult compared to that of English and Hindi.
It may be mentioned that the Calcutta High Court had also sought clarification from the Centre and CBSE for so many mistakes in the question paper, after a writ petition was filed at the court by a medical aspirant. The court also instructed to reserve a seat for the petitioner.
"There should be no discrimination on the grounds of language in any examination and CBSE has no right to put the Bengali medium students in jeopardy," said one of the doctors who wrote to the President.