The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has told the Gujarat High Court that it framed different sets of question papers for this year’s National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for English and Gujarati language students fearing that regional language papers would get leaked. The court in turn responded that it was not satisfied with CBSE’s response.
The court expressed its dissatisfaction over the CBSE’s reply saying that the argument was not valid as leaking a paper was a possibility even in English language question papers.
The CBSE on Tuesday said it was preparing to challenge in the Supreme Court the order of the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court granting interim stay on publication of NEET results across the country, which would apply to Gujarat as well.
Justifying its stand on framing different sets of question papers for English and other languages, the CBSE in an affidavit filed before the division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi said it was done to make it easier for it to conduct the test again in case there was leak of regional language question papers.
It stated in the affidavit that almost 90% students appeared for the test in English, and only 8-10% candidates took the test in other regional languages.
The CBSE stated that chances of question paper leak was higher for regional language papers.
In case there was a leak in vernacular language papers, it would be easy for them to conduct examinations again as only 8- 10% candidates would be affected while a majority of students who appeared for English medium test would remain unaffected.
The court expressed its dissatisfaction on CBSE reply saying that the argument was not valid as leakage was possible in even English language question papers.
An official of the CBSE present in the court stated that the interim stay put on publication of results of NEET which was conducted on May 7 across the country would also apply to Gujarat till June 12 when the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court next heard the case.
He also said that the results would not be published until the matter was again heard on June 12, but added that the CBSE was in the process of challenging the interim stay imposed by the Madras High Court on publication of results.
The Gujarat High Court will next hear the case on June 13.
Candidates who had appeared for the test in Gujarati medium had moved the high court seeking the court’s direction to the CBSE to scrap the test held on May 7 and hold it afresh with same set of question papers for English and Gujarati languages.
They said that while a common merit list would be prepared by CBSE, questions asked to them were nearly totally different from questions asked to English medium students, with Gujarati medium questions being of much higher level of difficulty.
[“source-hindustantimes”]
