CET wait finally ends for pupils

Updated on: Thursday, January 19, 2012

After year-long flip-flops over the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), the date for the Maharashtra Health and Technical—Common Entrance (MHT-CET) was finally announced on Wednesday.

The CET for entrance to all courses in health sciences, pharmacy and engineering will be conducted on May 10 by the state government. With this, students who have been aspiring to get in to medical colleges but have been under a cloud of uncertainty for the past few months are certain to be relieved.

Last year, the Medical Council of India (MCI) announced that admissions to all MBBS and postgraduate medical courses from the 2012-13 academic sessions will be done through NEET. However, several state governments, including Maharashta, challenged the order. High courts in Madras, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka also stayed NEET. In Maharashtra, students and college associations also moved court.

Finally, the MCI decided to implement NEET from the 2013-14 academic year. This year, the CET will be jointly conducted by the Directorate of Technical Education and Directorate of Medical Education and Research.

Students have had to go through a lot of stress and confusion over the last few months even as they prepared for the most important examination of their life. A student from a Vile Parle college—who did not want to be named—said, “As NEET was to be conducted by the Centre, we were worried that most parts of the syllabus would be based on the CBSE text. Also, teachers said NEET would give weightage to the syllabus studied in Class XI as well, which was another major concern. We were not sure what kind of questions would be asked from the Class XI syllabus. We were following the developments in newspapers.”

Sangeeta Srivastava, principal of TP Bhatia College in Kandivli, said, “Several students start preparing for their CET right from Class XI. If NEET was conducted this year, they would have lost out on the time needed for preparations. The good students would have managed, but the average ones would have been left with little options.”

According to Umakant Amrutwar, joint secretary of the Parents’ Association of Medical Students, pupils should now be relieved. “If the Centre had conducted the test, then students following the central board curriculum would have had an advantage over others.”

Pravin Shingare, in-charge director of DMER, said the test would be conducted as usual.

CET wait finally ends for pupils

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