Summary
The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences, which had itself set the September 9-10 dates for NEET-SS 2023 on July 27, said the exam “has been deferred” because of the G20 summit on those dates and travel restrictions in Delhi from September 8-10
A central exam board on Thursday announced the postponement of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test for Super-Speciality (NEET-SS) postgraduate medical and surgical courses scheduled for September 9-10, citing the G20 summit in Delhi.
The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences, which had itself set the September 9-10 dates for NEET-SS 2023 on July 27, said the exam “has been deferred” because of the G20 summit on those dates and travel restrictions in Delhi from September 8-10.
The board said on Thursday it would notify a revised schedule for the exam shortly. The NEET-SS selects candidates for courses leading to DM, Mch, or DrNB. The exam candidates are postgraduate doctors with MD or MS degrees wishing to specialise in medical fields such as cardiology, critical care medicine, hepatology, or nephrology, or surgical fields such as gastrointestinal surgery, neurosurgery, paediatric surgery or surgical oncology.
The postponement has angered sections of postgraduate doctors who will need to reschedule travel plans to reach NEET-SS exam centres. They say the board should have factored in the G20 summit dates when it announced the exam dates on July 27.
“The G20 dates had been finalised many months ago,” said Suvrankar Datta, a postgraduate doctor in radiology and coordinating secretary of the resident doctors association at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. “The board should have been aware of the G20 summit when fixing the exam dates.”
Government hospitals across Delhi have also cancelled leave for medical staff during the G20 summit. This, Datta said, could be another, unstated reason for the postponement. If senior residents do not get leave on those dates, they cannot take the exam, he said.
“This reflects poor coordination between the board and other agencies,” Datta said.
Among the largest such clusters of postgraduate doctors forced to change their travel dates are in Srinagar and other parts of Kashmir because the board has rejected multiple pleas by doctors to establish an NEET-SS centre in Srinagar.
“We estimate over 400 PG doctors in and around Srinagar are candidates for NEET-SS 2023 and we’ve all had to book tickets for either Jammu, Delhi, or other places,” said Rubeena Bhat, president of the resident doctors’ association at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar.
“We have to cancel our booked tickets,” she told The Telegraph. “We don’t understand why the board has not agreed to an exam centre in Srinagar. We were told ‘security reasons’. But the board routinely holds the NEET-PG exam in Srinagar, why not NEET-SS?”
The Federation of All India Medical Associations, a nationwide body of postgraduate doctors, had on August 11 sent a letter to the board expressing concerns that the absence of a centre in Srinagar would cause inconvenience to a significant number of candidates from Kashmir.
Under the September 9-10 exam schedule, the board had envisaged results to be declared on September 30 and the new sessions to begin on October 15. The NEET-SS is required for entry into super-speciality courses in all medical institutions, government and private, except five central institutions.
Last updated on 01 Sep 2023
