Joining the chorus against the decision to conduct Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Main and National-Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) amid pandemic, Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Saturday urged the Union government to cancel the two nationwide tests “immediately” and make “an alternative arrangement” for admissions this year.
“The central government is playing with the lives of millions of students in the name of JEE-NEET exam. The thinking that only NEET and JEE exam are the only option for admission is very narrow and impractical,” he said in a series of tweets.
Underlining that educational institutions around the world are adopting new methods of admission, he asked why alternative methods for admission can’t be adopted in India also.
“How sensible is it to stake children's lives in the name of entrance examination?” he added.
Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav also targeted the Union government on the issue, calling it “stubborn” and demanded that the government should not force the students to take the exams without making arrangements for “corona safe transportation and examination centers” for them.
He also demanded that students and parents should be provided with “corona safe” lodging facilitates as well.
Students have intensified their demand for postponement of the JEE and NEET exams as the National Testing Agency under the Ministry of Education (MoE) on Friday announced the government’s decision to conduct the two entrance exams for engineering courses and undergraduate medical programmes respectively as scheduled earlier.
While the NTA will conduct JEE-Main from September 1 to Septemebr 6, it will hold the NEET on September 13.
This comes after the Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea seeking postponement of the two entrance tests, observing that the career of the students cannot be put on peril for long and a full academic year cannot be wasted.
“Though there is a pandemic situation, ultimately life has to go,” the three-judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Arun Mishra had noted during the hearing conducted through video conferencing.
BJP leader and Rajya Sabha member Subramainan Swami Friday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to direct the Ministry of Education (MoE) conduct the JEE-Main, NEET and other competitive exams after Diwali in view of the Covid-19 pandemic situation in the country.
“There is a widespread desperation amongst the youth since this examination is a ‘make or break’ situation for them and they have to be fully prepared. (By) conducting the exam, in my opinion, you may lead to a large number of suicides around the country of youth,” he noted in his letter.
Seeking to reassure the students of their safety, the NTA has said that elaborate arrangements have been made to sanitise the examination centres, before and after the conduct of the exams, and also give fresh masks and hand gloves to the candidates in case they want.
The testing agency said that it has also prepared “a comprehensive advisory” for all functionaries with regard to the management of examination centre, and has solicited support of the State chief secretaries, police chief and district administration heads for maintaining law and order condition, power supply, facilitation of movement of candidates and exam functionaries, crowd management in front of exam centres.
