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KOLKATA: The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) on Sunday baffled students as the English and Bengali question papers of the exam didn't match. Candidates taking the test in Bengali alleged that the level of difficulty was way higher than in English or Hindi. Some even claimed that the weightage varied, which will give undue advantage to students opting to take the exam in English or Hindi.

This year, NEET was held in 10 languages, including English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Oriya and Kannada.

According to sources, CBSE prepared completely different set of questions for regional languages, including Bengali, unlike in 2013 when all question papers were uniform and had the same content. The different languages were just translations of one another. This year, only the Bengali and Gujarati papers were similar.

Sunday's exam stumped local students as even invigilators noticed that the Bengali question paper had no similarity with the English question paper.Though NEET was held in 2016, Bengali was not included. Many aspirants complained that the level of difficulty will deprive them from bagging a good All India Rank. Usually, Bengali questions are translations of the English question paper.On Sunday , while discussing with friends writing in English and Hindi, we found the contents were different,“ said Sushovan Ghosh from Amtala and a student at Sarisha RKM. He took the test from Guru Nanak Public School in Howrah.

“Even the weightage of questions was different. Hindi question papers had more questions than the Bengali papers.The weightage of questions in Hindi are also lower. Hindi candidates will get a huge advantage because even if they make an error it will cost them lower marks,“ he added.

Another student pointed out the Bengali question paper -which had an English version -had difference in terminologies. “Leave aside the difference of content, the English version of the Bengali question paper had discrepancies in terminologies,“ said another examinee, Koushik Mullick. Former Director of Medical Education Sushanta Bandopadhyay said this was “unfair“: “CBSE promised though the NCERT and Bengal HS Council syllabus were different, students from Bengal will not suffer as NEET will conduct on a uniform syllabus. If the content of English and Bengali papers are different, how can CBSE claim the test was uniform?“ Sunil Agarwal, centre director of Akaash Institute in Bengal, however feels there should not be any hullabaloo about CBSE introducing different set of question papers. “In all online exams, like AIIMS, JEE(Main), this is a standard practice. The examining authority needs to ensure that the difficulty level is same. Maintaining confidentiality of the questions is important because more the languages more the hands the papers have to pass,“ he said.

Amiya Maity , ex-teacher at SSKM , said: “While giving out instructions, CBSE had nowhere mentioned that students will get different sets of questions.“

Times View

NEET organisers will have to ask themselves whether different sets of questions for students answering in different languages may lead to an uneven playing field. This is an exam that will determine the future of thousands of students. Utmost care should have been taken to ensure fairness when serious misgivings are already there about state board students starting with a disadvantage.

