The trouble related to the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2016 does not seem to be ending anytime soon. Furious students, who have given NEET, protested today in front of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Delhi office. The students have demanded a re-examination of NEET on the grounds that allegedly, the NEET papers in Uttarakhand got leaked before the examination on July 24. They are also demanding a re-examination on the grounds that the Phase II examination was more difficult than the phase I examination of NEET.
The students have also filed fresh petitions alleging that CBSE has released the results of NEET without considering the normalization or rationalization of the marks obtained by the students in the two phases of the test. While, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear fresh pleas regarding the normalization of the marks for the NEET phase II examination, CBSE has not come up with any solution in this regard.
Vivek Pandey, a NEET aspirant from Madhya Pradesh, who took both the Phase I and II of the examination said that the phase II paper was tougher than phase I. He said, “When I counted my scores based on the answer keys issued by CBSE for Phase I of NEET, it went up to 470. However, after NEET II, my marks got dropped to 420 in the final results.” Criticizing the lack of transparency in the overall evaluation process of CBSE, he said, “OMR sheets could easily get tampered with and the scores can change drastically, as the examination has not been conducted online.”
One of the protesting students, Sushil Raj from Bihar who gave both Phase I and II of NEET, said “The exams were conducted on two different dates and there were two different question sets with different difficulty levels. It should not get treated as a single examination for determining the rank of the candidates without normalizing the marks for the final results.” Through a letter addressed to the Chairman of CBSE, Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi, the protesting students demanded that the All India Counselling and State Counselling should be conducted together so that each of the candidates can only take one seat and the process of admissions can get over soon. In the list of demands, there was also a mention of a unified private college seat counselling from the students as well.
The Officer on Special Duty for NEET, Dr. Sanyam Bhardwaj was contacted repeatedly for his input regarding the matter, but he didn’t responded to our phone calls until the publishing of this article.