After weeks of nail-biting apprehension, Medical aspirants can breathe easy. The West Bengal Joint Entrance Board will conduct the medical entry test for 2012.
No NEET for West Bengal MBBS Admission : Suspense ends: CET on hold, it’s WBJEE this year
Earlier, there was suspense over the CBSE-conducted Common Entrance Test (CET) that is being made mandatory nationwide. If Bengal were to follow it this year, thousands of higher secondary students would have a tough time getting to terms with the CBSE syllabus and answering the test in English. The WBJEE questions are set in Bengali as well, but there is no vernacular option in CET.
From http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Suspense-ends-CET-on-hold-its-WBJEE-this-year/articleshow/10938254.cms
KOLKATA: After weeks of nail-biting apprehension, Medical aspirants can breathe easy. The West Bengal Joint Entrance Board will conduct the medical entry test for 2012.
No NEET for West Bengal MBBS Admission : Suspense ends: CET on hold, it's WBJEE this year
Earlier, there was suspense over the CBSE-conducted Common Entrance Test (CET) that is being made mandatory nationwide. If Bengal were to follow it this year, thousands of higher secondary students would have a tough time getting to terms with the CBSE syllabus and answering the test in English. The WBJEE questions are set in Bengali as well, but there is no vernacular option in CET.
After a meeting of the JEE board members with officials of the higher education and health departments on Wednesday, the board unanimously decided to conduct the JEE medical and engineering 2012 as usual. “We’ll issue the final notification soon and start distributing forms,” said board chairman Bhaskar Gupta.
Gupta assured examinees that they needn’t worry about strictures from the Medical Council of India (MCI) that it may derecognize degrees of MBBS students who do not take the CET.
“The government must have a plan. We could not have taken a decision bypassing the government. It knows about the problem and will take responsibility for the medical students. They need not worry. Moreover, though MCI had said they may derecognize the degrees of students who do not appear in CET, they have not confirmed the decision,” Gupta said, adding: “Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are also conducting separate medical entrance tests and not participating in CET. They have got stay orders from the high courts.”
He would not say if the Bengal government was planning to take legal steps and secure a stay order. “This can be best answered by the government itself. However, legal advisors of WBJEE board have given me the go-ahead and informed me that there won’t be any legal hassles if we take a separate admission test,” Gupta added.
The WBJEE will be held on April 15 next year. “All the questions will be multiple-choice. We shall start making preparations accordingly.”
“With only five months to go for CET, medical aspirants in the state were in a dilemma. We could not let the uncertainty continue any further,” said a health department official.
Though chief minister Mamata Banerjee had written to Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad to conduct the exam in Bengali, no reply has arrived even after three weeks. “The CM had wanted a reply within a week. The Centre had been acting pricey. CBSE, which will conduct CET in 2012, has said they will prepare question papers only in English and Hindi and not in regional languages. We had no option but to keep the medical entrance exam with us at least for one more year,” said the health official.
“There is also a difference between the NCERT and Bengal syllabii. Till today, students were not sure which syllabus they had to follow. How could they start preparing for the exam?” the official said, adding that the government was preparing to take legal steps and file a case in high court soon.
It was education minister Bratya Basu who had pointed out that language and syllabus were the two major obstacles for the state to accepts CET from this year.
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