NEET aspirants are seeking to reschedule the NEET PG-2024 exam due to the allocation of “highly inconvenient” exam centres, their disbelief in the system, and concerns about the normalisation of marks.
“We can’t trust the system because there is no transparency and lots of mismanagement and irregularities,” said a 26-year-old Nishit, Neet PG aspirant
“I am a NEET-PG 2024 aspirant. For the past year, I have been living in Delhi. Previously, I got allotted to Delhi, which was very convenient as I didn’t have to rush on the last day of my exam. Now that I have been allotted a different centre, they are changing centres for the third time. What should we do? Study or just rush there, and that too when we have only 2 days to revise? Also, the two shifts for the exam are unfair. If normalisation takes place in NEET- PG, it will create even more chaos, as the majority have suspicions looking at what happened in NEET-UG. As we all know, things have already gone haywire. We need this exam to be postponed, and it should be conducted smoothly and in one shift,” he added.
In the Gautam Nagar area of Delhi, thousands of aspirants from across the country come to prepare for NEET-PG, but this year they are in distress due to mismanagement as many changes have been introduced to prevent paper leaks.
Aditya from Bihar who did his MBBS from Government medical College saharanpur said, “Since, last year I have been in Delhi to prepare for an exam. When the exam was scheduled on June 23, I got a centre in Delhi, which was postponed, but as per the corresponding address, we have to fill out a centre near my hometown, and now I have to go back to the centre allotted to the nearest town. Due to waterlogging, some roads are blocked, most trains are cancelled, and last-minute flights are too costly,”
He added “I don’t know why the NBEMS (National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences) would conduct a national-level exam in this weather. If I am not able to reach the centre for the exam, who would be responsible?”
Due to the alleged irregularities like the question paper leak in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG), conducted on May 5 by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, and other related courses, the NEET- PG exam has been postponed twice, but now, NBEMS has released the admit card, three days before the examination.
Many candidates have approached the Supreme Court and preferred seeking directions from the respondents to reschedule the NEET-PG 2024 examination on the ground that the petitioners and many similarly placed candidates have been allocated cities that are highly inconvenient for them to reach, further seeking details of the formula for normalising the four sets of question papers and seeking clarity on ensuring that the normalisation formula is disclosed to the candidates, thereby eliminating any possibility of arbitrariness in the process.
The petitioners said that the allocation of cities for conducting the exam was completed on July 31, and the specific centres are scheduled to be declared on August 8. The petitioner, while appreciating that the same has been done to curb any malpractice in the examinations, believes that, given such short notice, it has become highly difficult for students to make arrangements for their travel to their specific cities.
The petitioners stated that more than two lakh students are scheduled to appear in the examination. The examination is scheduled to be held in 185 test cities, therefore resulting in the non-availability of train tickets as well as the hiking of airfares due to dynamic pricing, thereby making it almost impossible for a large number of students to reach their test centres, the petition said.
The petition further said that the respondent had announced that the date of the examination would be August 11 and that it would be conducted in two batches.
“The fact that the examinations will be conducted in two batches and that the formula for normalisation is unknown to the candidates thereby causing an apprehension to the petitioners herein. There is a likelihood that one batch of candidates may face a more difficult question paper than the other batch. We want that the formula for normalisation should be disclosed before the conduct of examinations, thereby ruling out any fear of arbitrariness,” the petitioner said.
Note: Names changed to protect the identity of the candidates