Supreme Court allows revised pattern for medical entrance test

New Delhi, Oct 20 (IANS) The second and final phase of the entrance test conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for admission to medical colleges in the country will have only objective questions from next year.

The Supreme Court Monday allowed CBSE to implement the new pattern of questions for the second and final phase of the medical entrance tests as the Board sought the apex court's permission to implement a revised test pattern.

The CBSE conducts tests for admission to 15 percent of the seats of various medical colleges in the state that are open to candidates across the country irrespective of their domicile.

It approached the apex court for permission to implement revised test pattern as it was on the court's order that CBSE had been conducting tests since 2004 for admission for the 15 percent seats.

The apex court had entrusted the CBSE the responsibility while adjudicating a public suit dealing with various aspects of admissions in medical colleges all over the country.

A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice P. Sathasivam allowed the CBSE to implement the new test pattern and question paper for it, noting the proposal faced no objection from any quarter.

Apprising the bench of the rationale of its decision to introduce entirely objective type question papers in the final phase of the examination as well, the CBSE said it faced various problems in quick evaluation of the answer scrips to subjective and descriptive type questions.

The problems included the paucity of the expert teachers to evaluate the answer sheets and a very short span of time available for evaluation.

The CBSE said that while answers to the objective types questions could be checked quickly through computers without any subjective bias, the system of descriptive question-answer also faces the risk of subjective bias in evaluation.

It told the bench that from next year, the second and final phase of the entrance test would have only an objective type question paper of three hours duration.

It would have 120 questions, 30 each of physics, chemistry, botany and zoology with each question carrying four marks for correct answers and one negative mark for wrong answers.

The question paper for the preliminary tests, conducted to screen candidates for the final tests, would comprise of 200 questions, 50 each of the four subjects with the same marking system.

The CBSE also apprised the bench of the 2009 examination schedule - the preliminary test will be conducted Aril 5 and the final test will be on May 10.