Directorate of Medical Examination and Training (DMET) Joint Director Umakanta Satpathy on Friday said the opinion of Odisha was not sought by the Union Health Ministry while deciding on the inclusion of regional languages for conducting National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).
“Earlier, no all-India level entrance test was conducted in regional languages. This is for the first that time regional language will be used for conduct of an-all India entrance examination for getting admission to medical colleges. A formal opinion of the State Government has not been sought in this connection. The decision to conduct the examination in various regional languages has been taken by the Central Government without obtaining the opinion of the State in the matter during the video conferencing,” stated Satpathy.
He said, “Had the Centre told us so, we would have certainly demanded inclusion of Odia language in the list of regional languages which would be used as a medium for the conduct of NEET-UG from 2017-18.
The Union Health Ministry has decided that NEET-UG would be conducted in eight languages, Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Telugu and Tamil, from the next academic year.