With various States demanding the conduct of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for MBBS and BDS courses in their regional languages next year, the Centre has sought details on the medium of languages in which they conducted UG medical test in the last three consecutive years.
“Their plea for inclusion of the regional language will be considered only if they have conducted the examination in that language in said period,” said a senior official from the Union Health Ministry.
A decision was taken in this regard recently at a meeting headed by Health Secretary BP Sharma and attended by senior officials from CBSE, Human Resource Development Ministry and Health Ministry. It was also felt that holding examinations in a large number of vernacular languages was not advisable because of logistic as well as leakages issues.
In most likelihood, six vernacular languages — Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Assamese, Bengali and Gujarati — will be adopted to hold examinations.
The official said, “This year, for academic session 2016-17, NEET–II will be held in English and Hindi language as has been submitted to the Supreme Court. The States which have opposed the NEET citing language and other issues have been kept out of the common entrance ambit as per an ordinace, but only for this year. Next year, they all will have to fall in line.”
This year, NEET-II will be held on July 24. NEET-I was held on May 1 where around 6.5 lakh students sat for the examination. The combined result would be declared on August 17 so that the admission process can be completed by September 30.
In May, the Government had issued the notification exempting State Government seats in Government Medical Colleges and State Government seats in private institutions (if the State Government concerned so opts) for the current year from the NEET regulations.
There are 57,000 medical college seats in India with 28,000 seats in Government colleges and 29,000 seats private ones. Of the Government seats, the Central Government has around 4,000 seats and of the 29,000 seats in private colleges, States have around 12-15 per cent seats.