Rahul Gandhi asks govt to address concerns of JEE, NEET students, arrive at an 'acceptable solution'
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday asked the government to take into account concerns of JEE and NEET students who have been demanding postponement of the entrance examinations. While NEET is scheduled on September 13, JEE-Mains will be held from September 1-6.
There have been demands from several students and parents to further postpone the entrance exams in view of increasing coronavirus cases.
"Today lakhs of students are saying something. Their opinion on JEE, NEET exams should be heard and the government should arrive at an acceptable solution," Gandhi said in his tweet.
Earlier on Friday, officials in the Ministry of Education said that the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) will be conducted in September as scheduled.
In a statement, the ministry's National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts these exams, said over 6.4 lakh candidates have downloaded their admit cards for the engineering entrance exam, JEE-Main. It said 6,49,223 candidates have downloaded their admit cards, so far, against a total of 8,58,273.
"The NTA is happy to share with the JEE (Main) 2020 candidates that it has been able to offer the first choice of preference of centre cities to 99.07 per cent of the candidates," it mentioned.
The statement said that "142 candidates have, subsequently requested for a change in their allotted centre city due to various reasons, and the NTA is considering these requests positively.” It said as far as, "NEET (UG)-2020 is concerned, again for the first time, candidates of this examination were given opportunity five times to change their choice of centre city".
A total of 95,000 candidates availed the same and they have been accommodated against their revised choices, the NTA said in the statement.
On August 17, the Supreme Court had dismissed a plea seeking postponement of JEE (Main) April 2020 and NEET-Undergraduate examinations, which are scheduled to be conducted in September, amid spurt in number of COVID-19 cases, saying precious year of students "cannot be wasted" and life has to go on.
