Centre's decision to conduct online NEET will deprive many: City doctors
Kolkata: The Center's decision to conduct nationwide medical entrance examination twice a year by the National Testing Agency (NTA) will deprive the meritorious medical aspirants from far flung districts in the state as the exam would be conducted online only at various centers in the city, feel a section of the city doctors.
According to the doctors, the new method of examination lacks transparency and the students have to pay a hefty amount which would be difficult for the poor candidates. Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar earlier said a medical aspirant can take the exam two times a year and the best score will be taken into consideration for admission in the undergraduate course. NEET undergraduate level exam is scheduled to be held in February and May 2019.
NTA will replace the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) that has been organising National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) on behalf of the Medical Council of India and the Health Ministry. The medical entrance examination conducted by the NTA will be a computer-based online examination. According to the minister, the method of examination will check irregularities in the examination, leakage in the question paper.
A section of the city doctors, however, feel otherwise as they have pointed out some flaws in the examination when it is conducted by the NTA. According to them, online NEET is not possible and till now no medical or engineering online examinations have taken place in multi language. The minister, however, said they conduct the online exam in multi-language. According to Dr AK Maity, an expert in the field of medical education said the students have to pay Rs 1400 twice for appearing in the examinations. Earlier, students from the state had to pay Rs 400-500 for the same when it was conducted by the state government. The candidates from the rural areas have to come to Kolkata from far off districts only to appear for the online exam, which is not possible for a section of students.
Students will not be able to bring out the question paper and it can't be made public. As a result, candidates will not get to know how many mistakes they had committed during the exam. "The new method of examination will invite more irregularities in the examination. It was found through various incidents that there is always a possibility of corruption in the method of online examinations. There is also a possibility of scientific irregularities," said Dr Maity.
