Plea in high court for Re-NEET exam with uniform question paper across India
There are reports that NEET 2017 exam might be cancelled. According to a report by PTI, The Madras High Court has sought the CBSE’s stand on a plea to cancel the May 7 National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) , held for selection of candidates for undergraduate medical courses such as MBBS and BDS. A vacation bench of Justice R Mahadevan has sought the CBSE’s stand issuing it notice on the plea by an aspiring medical student’s mother, who has contended that the examination breached the students’ right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution. The vacation judge R Mahadevan, before whom the petition from the mother of a candidate came up for hearing last week, ordered notice to the CBSE returnable by May 24.
The petition was filed by Rohaiyaah Sheik Mohamed, mother of Abi Sheik Mohamed R., who took up the exam on May 7.
In the petition, Ms. Rohaiyaah said the questions contained in the English version were based on the CBSE syllabus while the questions in the Tamil version was based on the State board syllabus.
NEET 2017: Court issues CBSE notice over plea to cancel medical entrance exam
A vacation bench of justice R. Mahadevan sought the CBSE’s stand, issuing it notice on the plea by an aspiring medical student’s mother, who has contended that the examination breached the students’ right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution. The bench had issued the notice to CBSE, slating the matter for to hear again on 24 May. The mother of the candidate, who took the test in English language, has termed the test as being violative of the Article 14, contending that all the question papers in various language, including Hindi, English and Tamil, were not same and not of same difficulty level.
She further sought a direction to re-conduct NEET with same set of questions of all major languages in India. This have been reports that the NEET exam will be re conducted due to the on going controversies. For the exam a total of 11 lakh candidates appeared for the exam in 104 cities.
The petitioner submitted that selection under NEET would not amount to testing equal skills. It would amount to treatment of unequals as equals and thereby violating Article 14 of the Constitution, she submitted. She submitted though the test was conducted across India in all major languages, including Tamil, English and Hindi, the question paper in English was based on the CBSE syllabus, whereas the one in Tamil was based on the state syllabus. She alleged the authorities never told the candidates who took up NEET 2017 that the question papers in different languages would not be the same and that they have the discretion to frame different set of questions in different languages.
Stating that the present evaluation system is contrary and in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, the petitioner prayed for an interim injunction against the declaration of results based on the NEET examination held on 7 May and sought a direction to cancel the test. She further sought a direction to re-conduct NEET with same set of questions of all major languages in India.