The state government has decided to go ahead with a Common Entrance Test (CET) for medical courses from next year. The decision was taken at a meeting of various stakeholders held on Wednesday. The Supreme Court had on July 18 scrapped the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) that was held this year for medical aspirants. The meeting was headed by Vijay Kumar Gavit,Minister of Medical Education. It included three principals from Marathwada region,junior college teachers union representatives,Dr Praveen Shingare,Director,Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) and other officials, said Satish Chavan,MLC,graduate constituency,Aurangabad,who was also present in the meeting. The CET will have 180 questions and the total marks will be 720. The test duration will be three hours. Forty-five questions will be asked each from physics,chemistry,botany and zoology. Each question will carry four marks. One mark will be deducted for each wrong answer, said Anil Deshmukh,secretary,Maharashtra State Federation of Junior College Teachers. The questions will cover the combined syllabus of class XI and XII of NCERT textbooks. Many students have already started their preparation based on NEET prescribed syllabus. So we decided that the NEET syllabus will stay this year too. Nobody wants the children to be on the receiving end, Chavan said. Officials said from this year there will be greater transparency. From next year onwards,question papers,answer keys and individual Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets will be online on the DMER site, said Deshmukh.
