A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra on Friday refused to defer the NEET PG 2024 examination, saying careers of 2 lakh students cannot be jeopardised at the behest of five petitioners.
“Let there be certainty. As a matter of principle, we will not reschedule. There are two lakh students and 4 lakh parents who will weep over the weekend," CJI Chandrachud said, according to a PTI report.
On August 8, a petition was filed at the apex court claiming The National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) made last-minute changes in exam centres for many applicants. Candidates were offered exam centres far off from their hometown. These allegations led to a fresh round of controversies for the NEET PG exam and added to anxiety and stress for candidates.
Arguing for the petitioners, senior advocate Sanjay Hegde submitted to the apex court that rescheduling is needed because there is one exam in the morning and one in that afternoon.
About 2 lakh medical students preparing for NEET PG are now dealing with inconvenience and random exam centre allocations.
“Initially, Bhopal was the city allocated to me, which is very far from Bharatpur, Rajasthan, the place I stay,” Dr Ritika Sharma, from Bharatpur, Rajasthan, told The Telegraph Online.
“Last night [August 4] I got an email around 10:30 pm about my centre being changed to Sikar, which is 300 km away from my place. I have to book a cab from my place to reach the examination centre and that charges Rs 20 per km so it is Rs 6,000 one way and on top of that I also have to book a hotel which is at peak rate during this time.”
Reports show that students from Delhi were assigned centres in Kerala, and students from Jaipur were given centres in Ahmedabad. The dissatisfaction among students has led various students to blame the government. Social media platforms are filled with students venting their frustration.
Many such medicos have reached out to The Telegraph Online, outlining their trauma.
“My first choice of preference was Udaipur, but they allocated me Ajmer, similarly many of my friends have been allocated centres in Gujarat,” Dr Vandana Bhatt from Rajsamand, Rajasthan, told The Telegraph Online.
The NBEMS distributed the city intimation slip for NEET PG 2024 on July 31 and then changed it again on Aug 4.
The exam was postponed from June 23, 2024, due to claims of irregularities in competitive exams.
Normalisation adds to woes
Adding to the trauma of last-minute changes in the exam centres is the introduction of the normalisation technique, students who reached out to The Telegraph Online said.
This technique considers the relative difficulty of questions and the candidate’s performance in each session to provide a fairer assessment of a candidate's knowledge and skills.
The petition in the Supreme Court also raised the normalisation issue, submitting it is unknown to the candidates. The CJI agreed normalisation may not be the perfect solution.
The new schedule for NEET PG 2024 has the morning shift from 10 am to 1 pm and the afternoon shift from 2.30 pm to 5.30 pm on Aug. 11, 2024.
