Medical aspirants challenge 1-mark CET question

MUMBAI: A question in the MH-CET paper’s Chemistry section held on May 7 this year has been a bone of contention for several medical college aspirants in the state. While students and teachers claim the correct answer to the question on ‘derivatives of hydrocarbons’ is the fourth option given in the paper, the answer key released by the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) marked the third option as correct in the answer key released on May 20.
Several city students have challenged the one-mark question, as loss of even a single mark can take back their rank by at least a hundred. Around 1.9 lakh students appeared for the exam this year.
S Menghrajani, one of the parents, said the question itself was ambiguous. “The information provided in the question was incomplete. If you calculate the answer on the basis of the concept given in the government textbooks, the closest answer that students can arrive at is ‘five’, which is option D. The answer key, however, has marked C (four) as the correct answer,” said the parent.
The question in doubt is: “What is the possible number of mono-hydroxy derivatives of a hydrocarbon consisting of five carbons with one methyl group as branch?” The options given included: A) 2 B) 3 C) 4 D) 5. Since there is no mention of the words, ‘structural isomers only’ in the question, the correct answer must be ‘six’, which is not in the options. Most students have marked D) 5 as the answer as it was the closest to the correct response, said former teacher from Patkar College from Science Parivar, Subhash Joshi.
Another parent, P Desai said, “This question should be given as a bonus mark to all the students as today even one mark makes a lot of difference to one’s aspiration to get a seat in a government college. Several ranks will fall between the difference in one mark. Students’ hard work should not suffer due to the ambiguity in a question paper.” The last day for students to challenge the questions is May 28.
Pravin Shingare, director, DMER, said, “We do not get more than 500 challenges from across the state. But most of the challenges are usually about two to three questions only. The subject experts review the challenges after the deadline and then we will release the final answer key before announcing the results.”
Results for MH-CET will be out in the first week of June.