Centre, TS playing with lives of students: Cong

Telangana state Congress president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy has accused the BJP government at the Centre and the TRS government in the state of playing with the lives of lakhs of students by conducting examinations during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Along with senior party leaders, including former PCC president Ponnala Lakshmaiah, TPCC vicepresident Dr Mallu Ravi and others, he held a protest at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday demanding postponement of Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) and National Eligibility- cum- Entrance Test (NEET).

As per the directions of the All India Congress Committee, they wanted to hold a dharna before the offices of the Central government. They were prevented from doing so by the police, which deployed a large number of personnel at the gates of Gandhi Bhavan, the TPCC headquarters here.

Uttam Kumar Reddy said that it was insane on the part of the Centre to conduct JEE and NEET during the pandemic. He said Covid-19 cases were at their peak in almost all states. He pointed out that India has recorded the world's highest spike of positive cases in a single day on Friday. Similarly, Telangana state has been reporting nearly 3,000 cases every day for the last one week. In a situation where it has spread to the community level, Prime Minister Narender Modi’s government at the Centre wants to put the lives of nearly 25 lakh students and their families at stake by conducting the JEE and NEET exams.

Similarly, he said by silently accepting that decision, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao was risking the lives of nearly 1.2 lakh students who have registered for JEE and NEET, he alleged.