The state government has made its stand clear on the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admissions in MBBS. State health minister Jay Narayan Vyas has written a letter to the union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday stating Gujarat's stand on joining NEET.

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Vyas has laid down conditions _ that NEET be conducted in Gujarati and state quota of 85 % seats is filled by students appearing in the HSC or equivalent CBSE from Gujarat only, through a suitable mechanism for drawing up the merit list.

The state health minister said, "We don't want to compromise the interests of the students from the state. A notification issued by the Union government on February 27, 2012, is silent on the language of the test. It has also introduced a minimum score of 50 percentile. It may be possible that if we accept the notification, we may end up giving admission to students from states other than Gujarat on our state's 85% quota, as not many students from Gujarat may have qualified for the minimum eligibility score of 50 percentile. This would be injustice to students of Gujarat."

Gujarat has demanded that there should be a separate merit list for the state. "We have to ensure that students of Gujarat are not adversely affected by the decisions of the Medical Council of India or the Union Government. We had set up a committee of experts to study and analyze the union government's notification.

It is observed that the notification has not talked about the medium of language in which the NEET will be conducted. We have sought clarification on these issues at the earliest, otherwise there would be uncertainty regarding admission to the medical faculty among both students and parents," Vyas added.