Earlier, on July 18, the apex court had held that the Medical Council of India had no power to conduct the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) and force it on the government and private medical colleges. The NEET is a single entrance-cum-eligibility-test for admission in all medical colleges in India.
"We shall soon write a letter to the education minister informing him about the latest developments. We'll request the higher education department to conduct the examination from next year. It will be sent once we have completed the medical counseling," a health department official said.
Earlier, the state government, after a lot of debate and opposition, had decided to allow the candidates to sit for the NEET. The bone of contention was preparing question papers in Bengali that the CBSE had refused to do in 2012. In 2013, however, the problem was settled and question papers were set in Bengali.
A senior official of the WBJEE board said, "If the medical examination returns to the state, the number of centres will increase uniformly and candidates will not have to travel to distant places. The question papers, too, will be set in Bengali and it will not be a word-to-word translation of English. The questions will be based on the Higher Secondary syllabus of Biology."
From 2013, WBJEE has changed the pattern of engineering examination. "Earlier Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry were held for two hours each. While Maths was taken on 100 marks, Physics and Chemistry was on 50 marks each. But from 2013 onwards, we have allotted two hours to 100 marks Mathematics while one and a half hour each for 75 marks Physics and Chemistry. If Biology is again re-introduced from next year we will have to reorganise the examination structure. Everything will be decided in the next academic committee meeting," added the official.