The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test or NEET, the common entrance test for the undergraduate medical and dental courses, has been postponed in the wake of the recent coronavirus outbreak. The exam was earlier scheduled to be held on May 3, 2020. This medical entrance exam takes place once in a year for admission to the undergraduate medical or MBBS, BDS, and AYUSH programmes.
National Testing Agency (NTA), who is the official conductor of this exam, has released a notification in light of this announcement. NTA director General Vineet Joshi said in the statement, “In view of hardships faced by both parents and students in view of the COVID-19 epidemic, the NEET exam scheduled on May 3 has been postponed the ensuing NEET (UG) May 2020 examination scheduled to be held on May 3, 2020.”
Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has recently tweeted to the matter saying that the NEET exam has been postponed so that the students and parents do not have to face any kind of convenience while travelling to the examination centres.
He tweeted: “Since Parents and Students have to travel to different examination centres, to avoid any inconvenience to them, I have directed National Testing Agency @DG_NTA to postpone NEET (UG) 2020 and JEE(Main) till the last week of May.”
As per the orders by the HRD ministry, the JEE Main and NEET examinations have been postponed till the last weeks of May. The admit cards for NEET exam will be issued after April 15. All the parents and students are advised to keep an eye on the NTA website for further updates regarding the entrance examinations.
NTA Director-general also stated: “We are hopeful that we would get back to normal situation relatively soon; but for now, various concerned ministries and examination boards are examining the scenario to evaluate the situation that may necessitate any change in the schedule. As of now, the exam is proposed to be held in the last week of May 2020. The exact date will be announced later on after assessing the situation.”
According to a report by the Times of India, a senior NTA official said that the new dates for the NEET and JEE Main examinations are likely to be revealed only once the lockdown period is ended in accordance with the COVID-19 outbreak.
NTA has requested all the NEET and JEE Main candidates and their parents to keep their eye on the official website of the NTA to get further information about the examination dates while they will also be notified on their registered mobile number and the email addresses. NEET aspirants can also reach out to these numbers for any further information - 8700028512, 8178359485, 9650173668, 9599676953, and 8882356803.
The entire country has been under lockdown till May 14 after the announcement was made by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the wake of the recent pandemic - COVID-19 outbreak. As per the Union Health Ministry, the number of corona positive cases are on the rise recently.
However, while NTA has announced to postpone the engineering and medical entrance examinations, the authority is yet to announce the status of its other entrance examinations such as National Council for Hotel Management (NCHM) JEE admission test.
