A group of nine students from Madurai has filed a joint writ petition in the Madras High Court Bench here seeking a direction to the Centre to cancel National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) conducted on May 7. They argued that the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) by framing different question papers for students who wrote the test in 10 different languages had denied them a level playing field. Instead, the board could have translated a common question paper.
Justice N. Seshasayee on Thursday ordered notice to the CBSE returnable by a week. He, however, refused to grant an interim injunction restraining the Centre and the State government from making admissions to undergraduate medical courses on the basis of NEET marks held on May 7 in English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Odia and Assamese.
In an affidavit filed on behalf of the students S. Jonila, P. Surya, P. Siddarth, K. Ajay Sharan, S. Nitin Prakash Sivasubramanian, Gautham Sankar, J. Aditya, D. Richard Rishaban Dass and M. Naveen Kumar, it was stated that all of them had written the NEET this month in English on the basis of uniform syllabus.
‘Easier in Tamil’
They were shocked to learn subsequently that the question paper was not uniform across the country.
Claiming that CBSE had not disclosed that different question papers had been prepared in different languages and that the paper in Tamil was much easier than in English, the students said: “One India, one question paper is a must in NEET. Otherwise, assessment of intelligence and aptitude will differ. Further, an uneven playing field would infringe the right to equal opportunity in education.”
Students in Maharashtra, Karnataka and West Bengal too were agitated over different question papers having been prepared in different languages, they claimed.
Accusing the CBSE of maintaining a stoic silence on the issue, they contended: “If dissimilar gauging is permitted, candidates with lower ability would benefit and those with higher ability would get ousted from competition.”
