BENGALURU: The Karnataka government is fully equipped to conduct an internal and state-wide entrance examination for admission to medical colleges as opposed to the centralised NEET conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), said Medical Education Minister Dr Sharanprakash Patil.
The minister said he is confident of Karnataka’s testing infrastructure, especially the Common Entrance Test (CET) conducted by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA). “Karnataka has been a leader in conducting entrance examinations at the state level.
The CET system, which is transparent, was established long back during Veerappa Moily’s administration. We have the expertise to conduct exams without any hazards,” Patil stressed.
“The National Medical Commission (NMC) sets the scope of NEET, based on CBSE syllabi, and the state government has had the foresight to implement CBSE across Karnataka’s pre-university (PU) colleges. If NMC asks us to adhere to its prescribed syllabus to conduct a state-level entrance examination, that will not be a problem at all.
There will not be any conflict,” he said. Questioning the transparency of NTA and the union government, he said there have generally not been complaints about the state government’s execution of examinations and the few that have arisen were minor anomalies.
“It depends on the intent of the government. If any government wants to conduct examinations transparently, it can. Mistakes can happen occasionally; but it can’t happen every time. If the government is not interested in correcting leaks, they will keep happening,” Patil said. He chastised the union government for not only being “incompetent”, but also completely opaque in conducting NEET.
