State no to common medical test

The Mamata Banerjee government has written to the Centre, expressing its unwillingness to admit students to state medical colleges through a proposed all-India test on the grounds that its curriculum is not on a par with that of the central boards.

The Medical Council of India and the Union health ministry have decided to hold a common entrance test (CET), to be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education, from next year for admitting students to the 35,000-odd MBBS seats across the country.

The test, mooted by the Centre after some aspiring doctors moved court saying they were inconvenienced by the plethora of admission tests, will cover government-run as well as private medical colleges.

The Bengal government wrote to Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Thursday, asking for consent to admit students to state medical colleges through the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination in the 2012-13 session.

“Students of Bengal will suffer if the CET is introduced before the science syllabi followed by the state Higher Secondary education council is tuned to the all-India standard,” said an official in the health department, who claimed that the Centre’s decision on the common test was not binding on the state.

Sources in the Higher Secondary education council confirmed that the physics, chemistry and biology syllabi in the plus-II level were not on a par with the ones followed by all-India boards, such as the Central Board of Secondary Education and the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations.

There is another reason for the state’s opposition to the test. “We do not want to expose our students to the all-India test till the states and the Centre sort out certain issues, such as printing the questions in regional languages along with English and Hindi,” the official said.

The question papers of the state JEE are printed in English and Bengali.

There is no indication yet from the health or the higher education department on whether the government would accept the all-India test from the 2013-14 academic session.

Before finalising the proposal to start the common entrance test, the Centre had late last year sought opinions from all state governments on the matter. Apart from Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, no other state had opposed the move. Bengal under the Left Front had not expressed any reservation about the proposal.