Medical JEE three-time limit

The Bengal government has decided to abolish its 35-year-old practice of allowing aspirants to take the JEE (medical) as many times as they want to ensure that fresh class XII graduates get right of way in medical schools.Starting next year, students will be allowed to take the entrance test only three times from the year they first sit the class XII exams.That means any candidate who has cleared the HS or an equivalent exam before 2006 would be ineligible to appear for the test in 2008.There has been an age limit for students taking the engineering entrance, primarily because recruiting companies prefer employing youngsters. But the Medical Council of India has no similar guideline.The new guidelines in Bengal do not explicitly impose an age limit on medical candidates, though for all practical purposes the curb on the number of attempts amounts to such a bar.The decision has yet to reach the public domain. But hints of such a step were greeted with rumblings of resentment in medical colleges as nearly 50 per cent of the current students have made it after multiple shots at the joint entrance.