If the Chennai-based Doctors Association for Social Equality (DASE) has its way, every single one of the 11.35 lakh students who wrote NEET on May 7 will have to retake it. No, seriously. They are going to write to the CBSE, MHRD and the Medical Council of India to conduct the examination again because they felt it was "unfair" that different language papers had a different level of difficulty.
Dr G R Ravindranath, General Secretary of DASE said, "Ths time NEET was held in 10 Indian languages and we have had complaints from students that different language papers had different questions leading to a difference in the difficulty level."
According to him, the paper in Gujarati was the easiest, while the one in Tamil was moderately difficult. West Bengal's Education Minister has already gone on record complaining that the paper was way more difficult than the NEET papers in other languages. "This is unfair for the students and the only way to ensure that they have a level playing field and the same opportunity to get medical seats is by holding a retest," he said.
Between a lot of confusion, opposition to NEET from states like Tamil Nadu and a lot of hullaballoo over cutting off sleeves, Nazi-like screening against metal-tipped underwear and lots of political gesturing, NEET has been in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. Imagine if we have to go through that all over again. Imagine that!
