The question paper for the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test will be the same across all languages from this year, the Central Board of Secondary Education told the Supreme Court on Thursday, the Hindustan Times reported. In August 2017, the apex court had pulled up the education board for setting different questions for students taking the examination in regional languages.
“The paper in vernacular languages will also contain questions in English so that there is no confusion,” the CBSE’s lawyer Tarachand Sharma told the court. The common entrance test was introduced in 2016 after the court called for a common test to avoid multiplicity of exams that would cost a lot of money and time.
Students from Gujarat and West Bengal had complained after the exam on May 7, 2017, that the regional papers were tougher than the one in English. However, candidates from Tamil Nadu had said that the Tamil paper was easier. Their complaints raised many questions on uniformity, which was the basic tenet of the NEET. The CBSE had defended its move, saying it was done to avoid a leak.
The top court, however, declined to accept petitions filed against the CBSE as 6.11 lakh students of the 1.1 million candidates had cleared the test and counselling was on. A 17-year-old medical aspirant from Tamil Nadu, who was among those who had challenged the applicability of the test, had committed suicide last year, allegedly because she was unable to get a seat in a medical college.
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