Maharashtra to conduct CET for Medical courses admissions

The Maharashtra state government has decided to conduct Common Entrance Test (CET) for Medical courses admission across the state from 2014.

The decision was taken at a meeting of various stakeholders.

On 18th July, Supreme Court had scrapped the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), that was held for Medical courses admissions across India.

"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.

Earlier in 2012, State had conducted MHTCET for Medical courses admissions.

In 2013, the state had accepted to join NEET, in order to provide admissions in Medical courses.

Now, SC has scrapped NEET test. So state has decided to conduct CET for Medical courses.

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 10 and 12 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.