BENGALURU: Two opinion leaders of corporate Bengaluru crossed swords over the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) on Sunday.
When T V Mohandas Pai, who describes himself on micro-blogging site Twitter as ‘a global citizen and a Bangalorean at heart,’ opposed the introduction of NEET this year, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, CMD of Biocon, described it as essential to weed out corruption in medical education.
It all started when Shaw, with her Twitter handle @kiranshaw, shared an article about President Pranab Mukherjee seeking legal advice on the Centre’s proposed ordinance to keep state boards out of NEET this year.
“NEET will weed out corruption in medical education,” Shaw tweeted.
Responding to her, Pai, chairman of the privately run Manipal Global Education Services, said: “Kiran not true.neet based on cbse syllabus,local language not used,discriminatory.pl understand these issues.” (Express has not edited the tweets, hence the eccentric punctuation and capitalisation.)
Shaw, who stood her ground, directed Pai in another tweet to ask Dr Devi Shetty, Chairman of Narayana Hrudayala, “who knows a lot about this issue”.
Replying to her tweet, Pai criticised Shetty over his stand.
“He is wrong and passing poor judgement on this. Willing to have public debate anywhere. issue is not Neet but method,” he said.
Soon, other Twitter users joined in and began airing their views. As their numbers grew, Shaw stopped tweeting.
Pai was buffeted by many responses critical of his position. In one of his later tweets, he said he was only against the implementation of NEET this year.
“We should have Neet from next year. All students get adequate time to prepare.ban quota in p med colleges,only By test,” he posted.
Bitter-tweet war
@kiranshaw shared an article on Sunday regarding president seeking legal advice on the ordinance on NEET. “NEET will weed out corruption in medical education,” she tweeted.
Pai’s response “(sic) Kiran not true.neet based on cbse syllabus,local language not used, discriminatory.”
To which Kiran said “Pls ask Devi Shetty” - chairman of Narayana Hrudayala - “who knows a lot about this issue”.
Pai’s response “(sic) He is wrong and passing poor judgement on this. Willing to have public debate anywhere. issue is not Neet but method.”