Let JEE, NEET be held in September: Students from Maharashtra, Gujarat in Apex court

A week after undergraduate (UG) medical and engineering students from 11 states across the country filed a petition in the Supreme Court (SC) seeking the postponement

A week after undergraduate (UG) medical and engineering students from 11 states across the country filed a petition in the Supreme Court (SC) seeking the postponement of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), students from Maharashtra and Gujarat have filed an intervention in the matter.

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The intervention requests the court to allow the two national-level entrance exams for professional courses to be held as per schedule in September. It further states that any further delay in conducting these entrance tests will cause more anxiety among students who have been studying and preparing for the exams from the past two years at least.

Advocate Shrirang Choudhary, the briefing lawyer for students from the state, who have intervened in the matter at SC, said, “The state of Maharashtra has already postponed MPSC (Maharashtra Public Service Commission) exams which had been scheduled for September 13 in order to avoid any clash with the NEET exams. Postponing the NEET exam would be detrimental to the interest of lakhs of students who are placed in a similar situation with that of the present applicants. Lakhs of students have invested more than two years of their efforts and time in preparation. The applicantshas faced uncertainty for more than three months before the NEET exam schedule was announced. Any further postponement of the exam would result in further agony.”

Around 16 lakh students have registered for NEET-UG this year, while close to 9.3 lakh students had registered for JEE-Mains (Paper I) that was conducted in January. An equal number of students were expected to appear for the second phase of the exam, which are scheduled for April-May each year. This year however, owing to the Covid-19 outbreak, the National Testing Agency (NTA) kept postponing the exam dates. In NTA’s latest circular, both the exams have been scheduled to take place for September.

While several students and parents around the country have shared their concerns over conducting exams for lakhs of students across the country even as the Covid-19 cases are on a rise, an equal number of parents of students are also hoping that the exams are held as per the schedule so that the delay in the postponement of exams comes to an end.

“Medical admissions are time bound, and therefore, it makes no sense to further delay NEET, which will eventually delay the admissions process as well. Leaving an entire batch of medical seats vacant will be unfair because next year, the intake capacity of medical institutes will remain the same but the applicants will double in number, which will lead to more chaos,” said activist Sudha Shenoy, who is the parent of an aspirant.

She added that students should be given the option to either appear for the exam in the month of September or give the entrance exam and take admissions for the next academic year.