Thursday Brief

Although Supreme Court (SC) has said that the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission in Medical Colleges, and Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for entrance to Engineering Colleges across country can be held this year. The National Testing Agency (NTA) on yesterday said that they are fully prepared to conduct NEET and JEE, and further added that till date a total of 15.3 lakh admit cards have been already down loaded. Over 9.5 lakh candidates are to appear in JEE amd more than 15 lakh in NEET. Looking into Corona pandemic NTA has decided to reduce the number  of candidates per centre as compared to last year, so that social distancing norms can be adhered to. For JEE average candidate per centre now will be 120 as compared to 234 earlier, for NEET average candidate per centre will be 416 as compared to 597 earlier. Students all over the country are worried that this delay also may cost them  one semester, which means their graduation will be delayed by six months in the end.

Now yesterday, Congress and its allies ruled state CMs, along with West Bengal & Delhi have decided to file a petition in SC for rethink on their decision on holding of NEET and JEE from 1^st September. The SC recently dismissed appeal against holding of NEET & JEE, citing that “ Life should go on. We have to go ahead. We can not waste precious one year students.”

Now over 150 academics from various universities and higher education institutes have also written to PM Modi, extending their support to conduct JEE and NEET exams. In their letter they have mentioned that ‘millions of students who have passed Class 12 exams are now waiting at home eager to take next step, and we whole heartedly welcome govt’s decision to conduct these examinations.”

Yesterday NTA director General explained the total procedure  of  candidates entering and exiting from exam centre. He said “ There will be a maximum of  just 15 candidates at the registration desk and the complete process from entry to exit will be contact less- right from frisking to verification of documents and during exam. He further added that “ we have ensured crowd management before and after the exam. For candidates we have allotted staggered reporting time, now if there are 150 candidates at a centre, we have separated them into groups and they will report in a gap of 30 to 40 minutes. There will be queue managers at the entry and candidates will be made to stand at demarcated areas to ensure social distancing. At the outer cordon, there will be people to ensure that the accompanying guardians drop their wards and move on. They will not be allowed to park vehicles and stand at the gate. For this help of local police is being sought. He said any further postponement of the exams would seriously hamper the academic calendar as it takes lot of time to make these preparations. Candidates will be allowed to exit in batches to avoid crowding at the gate.”

The call by these few state govt at last minute to postpone the NEET and JEE is highly unjustified. There is no concrete knowledge how long this pandemic  situation is going to prevail. Most of you will remember that Spanish Flu took two years to abate. Now keeping entrance exams at abeyance is not in the interest of nearly 2.5 million students. Despite all these Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi along with CM of Congress ruled states, and CMs of some  other states, have joined in populist chorus of postponement of entrance exams. It only means that they have no sympathy with students, but just for sake of opposing the stand taken by govt. The problem is that all these opposition leaders have narrow mind as they think only for themselves, so at the next election rally they can say they have opposed this decision of central govt, keeping in view about general public’s health. The fact is that the further delay will be self defeating as we do not know when this pandemic will end. By then next batch of students will be ready to sit for these exams.

Authorities of all the states and UT, must amplify the reassuring message to students and their guardians/parents that safe conduct ox exams is in their interest, especially with politicians joining the cancel bandwagon at this time when exams are just few days away. Even in Germany and China entrance exam tests for students were conducted during this pandemic.

In the end, in my opinion the exams should proceed now with  schedule announced date because delaying further is not going to  benefit except these self centred  politicians.

Awaiting for your views/feed backs/comments.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

27^th Aug 2020