By Nava Thakuria*
Can NEET-UG emerge neat and clean? Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Union Cabinet (3.0) faces a difficult situation as the centrally organised entrance examination to select 10+2 standard students for admission into the government medical colleges across India embraces serious allegations of mismanagement. Nearly 2.4 million students participated in the test called the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test – Undergraduate (NEET-UG) conducted by the government-sponsored National Testing Agency (NTA) this year. The result was declared on June 4, 2024, (the day when vote-counting of the General Elections 2024 was going on), a full 10 days before the date that the nodal agency initially announced. Moreover, many students (over 1500) were offered extra (grace) marks that now invite severe criticism as to why they were given the grace marks without any pre-announcement.
Meanwhile, thousands of students across India hit the streets demanding a complete re-test where every aspirant can participate. The matter has already been placed before the Supreme Court, where the NTA admitted to offering grace marks to 1,563 students. However, the agency, instituted by the Union government in 2017 with the mandate to conduct entrance and recruitment examinations, neither disclosed the provision of extra marks in examination brochures nor divulged any criteria for the same. Described as a premier, specialist, autonomous and self-sustained testing organisation, the NTA has not clarified if it practised the system (offering grace marks to students to compensate for time loss during the entrance examinations for any reason) in NEET-UG 2023 or other tests.
Mentionable is that the NEET-UG 2024 caught media headlines for the wrong reasons as some students topped the list of qualified students with grace marks, who earned 720 (out of a maximum of 720 marks). Moreover, some students earned strange marks (which is otherwise impossible with the calculating system of 4 marks for each correct answer and -1 for every incorrect response) in the 200-minute long pen-paper test. A participant needs to answer 180 questions based on regular subjects including Physics, Chemistry and Biology (Botany and Zoology), where the candidate has to highlight the correct answer out of four options.
This year, the largest annual medical entrance examination was conducted on 5 May in over 4,750 centres across the country. An Indian 12th standard student must sit and score high marks in the nationwide test to get admission to All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research, IMS-BHU, KMC (Manipal & Mangalore), CMC Vellore, other government medical colleges, etc to pursue various medical courses. Earlier the process was completed by the All India Pre-Medical Test along with other entrance tests conducted by State governments and different medical colleges.
By now the apex court has directed to erase the grace mark given to 1,563 students and go for a re-examination for them in need. The opposition parties including the Congress have demanded a high-level probe into the episode alleging that the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party government failed to conduct the test honestly. Lately, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan admitted that there were some irregularities in conducting the NEET-UG and he assured the students and parents to do justice to them. Taking the matter seriously, the newly empowered minister also agreed that improvements are needed in the NTA too. Needless to say, the concerned evaluation process should be made quality-driven so that only deserving and dedicated students get the opportunity to pursue MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery), BDS (Bachelor of Dental Surgery), BVSc (Bachelor of Veterinary Science), and AYUSH-UG courses like BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery), BHMS (Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery), BUMS (Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery), BNYS (Bachelor of Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences) and BSMS (Bachelor of Siddha Medicine and Surgery).
Finally, the question arises, is it necessary for a student (aspiring to become a successful doctor) to perform excellently in the NEET-UG? Can the NEET-UG be assumed as a quality mechanism to guess a student’s intelligence to be a responsible physician in future? How a test comprising multiple choice questions (MCQs) can justify an aspirant to be enrolled with no other criteria? Somewhere, it needs to be checked, if the system has been misused by a section of coaching institutes to extract a huge volume of money from those desperate parents, who want to establish their sons/daughters as doctors by any possible means.
Nonetheless, NEET needs to come neat and clean.
*Senior journalist
