New Delhi: Medical Council of India (MCI), Delhi, has agreed to set National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) 2013 question paper in four other vernacular languages i.e. Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati. Earlier, the question paper was only drafted in two widely accepted languages, English and Hindi.
As per sources, the decision was taken by the Medical Council of India (MCI) at a meeting held here, recently. The meeting was attended by the representatives of medical education departments of various states and MCI officials. Susanta Bandyopadhyay, Director, Medical Education, who was also attending the meeting as an adviser from Bengal, confirmed that the MCI has decided that they will include Bengali, along with three other vernacular languages, in which the question papers will be prepared.
He also said that adding these languages for question papers seems to be the result of letters written by Mamata Banerjee to the Union Health Minister, Gulam Nabi Azad. National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) is proposed to be one single entrance test for admission into MBBS courses across the country. Initially, it was decided that the entrance test will be conducted from 2011 and later it was postponed to 2012. But the plans were deferred again by MCI as a number of states, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, had voiced dissent against the idea of framing question papers in English and Hindi.
Sources at the health department informed that a formal announcement would be made in this regard soon.
