Centre seeks Supreme Court nod to hold NEET in regional languages

​New Delhi: Coming under political pressure from the state governments and a section of the BJP leadership, the Union government on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court on its NEET judgement seeking to know whether it could hold the exam (phase-II) in regional languages at least as the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) was compulsory from this year onwards.

This was mentioned before the bench consisting of Justice Anil R Dave and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel. Solicitor-General Ranjith Singh sought to know whether the Centre could go ahead and hold the test in seven regional languages and English. The regional languages, he was mentioning were Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Assamese, Bengali Gujarati besides Hindi.

The bench said it had to consult a third judge, Justice Sivakirti Singh in this regard before conveying its decision to the Chief Justice.

However, no such move was made till the afternoon and it is not clear whether the SC was interested in looking into the issue raised by the Solicitor-General.

There was yet another issue involved as the Gujarat government sought to know whether it could go ahead and conduct its own examination just for this year as its students were not used to negative marking as was the case with the NEET.

So far, the SC was only insistent that the NEET be held from this year onwards. However, there are apprehensions of question paper leak if the examination is conducted in other regional languages apart from Hindi.

The MCI has already questioned the wisdom in holding the examination in any language other than English as the text books were all available only in English.

It is learnt that the Union government is under pressure from a section of its own leadership linked to the college caucus and is trying to appease it.