Guest column: Set your eyes only on NEET and do not waste your time on other tests'
Some things are very simple, unless you want to deliberately complicate them. Take the National Eligibility And Entrance Test, a compulsory admission test prescribed by the Medical Council of India. If you want to enroll for the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery(MBBS) course in any medical college
in India for 2016-17, you are required to pass NEET.
Do you also have to do CET, COMED-K, and the like? Don't bother. These other tests are simply useless today. Period. Higher education in India is largely regulated by the Union government and pan-India bodies. The states play only a small role. We have the Medical Council of India and Dental Council of India for medicine, the Bar Council of India for law, the All India Council for Technical Education for technical education and so on.
The Medical Council of India , which sets standards for medical education, was by law allowed to make an entrance examination compulsory for enrolment to an MBBS course or Post Graduate course in medicine. So a notification was passed on December 21, 2010, making it compulsory for any student who wanted to enroll for these courses to pass an entrance test conducted that very academic year.
Similarly, the Dental Council of India was also allowed to pass a similar regulation and it did so. Litigation and confusion ensued. But today, there is no confusion anywhere other than in the government of Karnataka or the various medical college groups in the state.
Karnataka has always been a mess when it comes to medical entrance tests as it has plenty of them. It is this very mess that the NEET and the Supreme Court want to abolish once and for all. By virtue of the Supreme Court order of April 28, 2016, no medical college anywhere in the country will be permitted to admit any student to a MBBS or BDS course if he or she has not passed the NEET test.
So, while you are still free to write CET, COMED-K or whatever else , their marks have ZERO value today. Your energy is better conserved preparing for the next NEET test to be held on July 24.
India is very fortunate to have a well thought out national scheme for higher education. So set your eyes only on the next NEET and do not waste your time on tests like the Karnataka CET. I also expect CLAT which is mandatory for admission to the 17 Union government run law colleges, to become mandatory for admission to every law college in India from the next academic year, just like NEET is for MBBS or BDS courses today.
The writer is advocate, Supreme Court.
