High court in India rules on Plasma cell
The fate of thousands of MBBS aspirants will be decided on Friday following the controversy over an answer to a question in the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test paper.
Day before the final merit list of the MH-CET was to be announced, the Bombay high court on Thursday set up a committee under Dr T Lahane, dean of Grant Medical College,
to find the correct answer to a disputed question in the CET paper. A division bench of Justices Anoop Mohta and V L Achliya told Dr Lahane to nominate three experts to the
panel and submit a report in a sealed envelope to the court by 3pm on June 12.
For the students, a medical seat and their career hinges on the answer to the question and the resultant one mark. Academic experts said the loss or gain of a mark can affect
students’ ranks at least by 50. Given that there are limited seats in government MBBS and BDS colleges, the difference could mean whether they obtain the elusive seat or not.
The dispute revolves around a multiple choice question that asked what are “plasma cells derived from”. Initially the answer key posted on the website by the department of
medical education and research (DMER) had said that the right answer was option (c) memory B-cells. Subsequently, claiming there was an error, the DMER said that the
right answer was option (b) helper T-cells.
The students, who had chosen option (c), moved court after the DMER modified the answer key. Advocate L M Acharrya, counsel for the students, claimed that the careers
of the students were at stake and sought the court’s intervention. Students and the government referred to the Std XII Biology textbook to claim that their answer was right.
When the state-appointed expert committee failed to resolve the issue during the course of the day, the HC suggested that an expert panel be set up, whose opinion would be binding on all.
The purpose of constituting this panel was to find the right answer to the multiple questions which were in the MHCET 2015, the paper asked what are “plasma cells derived from.”
The right answer according to the committee was B-lymphocyte cells. Amusingly, the answer was not among the four options which were provided in the question paper. The committee
came to a final conclusion and said that options ‘b’ and ‘c’ were relatively close to the right answer and one mark would be awarded to the students who had chosen either of the two.