NEET may be postponed to next academic year

The Central Government has been searching for a suitable and practical answer for the puzzle called National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) through its elaborate discussion with the States. After a prolonged tryst with chaos regarding the future course of NEET, the Centre has come up with a concrete solution. It has decided to postpone the common entrance exam, which was supposed to be conducted on 24 July 2016, to the next academic year.

The aforesaid decision took form in the wake of the following developments:

The State governments expressed strong concern regarding the amount of stress the students would undergo if ambiguity prevailed in case of NEET

The Centre held discussions with the States to understand their concerns in implementing NEET

The Centre-States sessions of brainstorming brought out a few practical difficulties to go ahead with NEET from this academic year and those difficulties are -

a) The Centre needs to see to it that the ongoing exams in the states are not hindered by the recent developments of NEET

b) The problem of language barrier for students of some of the States has to be handled sensitively

c) NEET will implement uniform syllabus across the country, but all the States are currently using different syllabus

d) Carrying out the second phase just two months after the first phase that was conducted on 1 May 2016 does not give enough time to the MBBS and BDS aspirants to prepare for the exams.

"It is the case of some of the states that boards are unequal, their languages are dissimilar. Can those who are dissimilar in language and unequal be placed on the pedestal of quality and asked to give the same exam? We will have to see how we deal with that particular issue," Arun Jaitley told Zee News.

Therefore, the Centre has decided to approach the apex court for the postponement of NEET to the next academic year which has, as of now, put all the confusions to rest and given some relief to the MBBS and BDS aspirants.