Gujarat High Court issues notice to CBSE, other parties over a plea to hold NEET exam afresh

A notice was issued to CBSE and other parties by the Gujarat High Court on Saturday over a plea for holding the NEET exam afresh with same questions in Gujarati and English languages.

The plea to scrap the recently held exam and hold it afresh was moved by a group of 40 parents of those students who had taken the CBSE-conducted National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) in Gujarati language.

After admitting the plea on an urgent basis, Justice A J Shastri issued notices to Centre, state government, CBSE, Medical Council of India and Dental Council of India and posted the matter to June 5.

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Through their petition, these parents contended that there were discrepancy in NEET exam papers, as the question paper in Gujarati was more difficult than the one in English.

The petition said by providing question papers having different difficulty levels for a common merit list was the breach of students' right to equality guaranteed under Article 14 of the Constitution.

"Hence, the NEET exam conducted on May 7 should be annulled so that afresh examination is held with same set of questions given to examinees of both medium", said the petition.

The petitioners also claimed that the candidates appearing from Gujarati medium were given a totally different set of questions which were tough, and hence these candidates are not likely to score high marks, even when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) prepares a common merit list for them.

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"Since the CBSE will prepare a common merit list based on marks scored by candidates irrespective of which language they took the test, candidates from Gujarati medium will lag behind due to difference in difficulty level of different question sets", the petition said.

NEET 2017 was conducted in ten languages.