Covid-19 no deterrent for medical aspirants
NEET examination on Sunday registered 85-90% attendance of 1.5 mn candidates, according to the NTA
NEW DELHI: Around 85-90% of the over 1.5 million candidates who registered for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the basis for determining admissions to undergraduate medical and dental courses, appeared for the exam on Sunday.
Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, while disclosing the turnout, also thanked state governments, many of which had arranged transport for the candidates, given the difficulties they faced amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
“NTA{National Testing Agency} informed me that around 85-90% students appeared in #NEET exam today. I sincerely thank all Chief Ministers and @DG_NTA for proper arrangements made to facilitate student participation. #NEET participation reflects the tenacity and grit of young, ” Pokhriyal said in a tweet.
The NEET turnout was higher than the attendance, of around 74%, at the Joint Entrance Examination (Main). NTA officials have attributed this to the fact that JEE (Main) is held twice every year. Many students who had already taken the exam in January may have decided to skip the test in September because of coronavirusrelated concerns.
Reports from across states suggested that students did face inconvenience, but still made it to the examination centres for the career-defining test.
In Bihar, 78,960 students had registered to write the exam. Thousands of medical and dental course aspirants travelled to Patna to take the test, held across 178 centres.
Most students said precautionary measures adopted at exam centres were satisfactory. Many who took the test in Bihar said they faced inconvenience because exam centres were in two districts (Patna and Gaya), which forced them to travel 100 to 200 kilometres.
A NEET aspirant, Anup Kumar of Saran district, said: “I left my home at 7 am to reach exam centre at 11 am. Travelling for long hours and a three-hour waiting period before commencement of the exam exhausted me. For the first time, I wore a mask for six straight hours. It caused suffocation.”
Candidates seemed relieved after taking the exam, which they said ranged from moderate to difficult.
Jyoti Kumari, who took the exam at AN College, said: “I found physics more difficult than biology. Few questions of botany section were tough. Physics questions were timeconsuming.”
In Jharkhand, the exam was held in 36 centres across Ranchi, Bokaro and Jamshedpur. The attendance was around 85%.
In Ranchi, the examination was conducted in 25 centres, where around 12,600 students were scheduled to appear.
The city coordinator for NEET, Ram Singh, who is also the principal of Delhi Public School (DPS), Ranchi, said: “The examinations passed off peacefully without any trouble. Around 85% students wrote the papers in Ranchi.”
NEET aspirants took the test at over 269 examination centres in six cities of Rajasthan. Although the examination was held from 2pm to 5pm, aspirants started arriving at examination centres from 11am, in line with the reporting time specified by NTA to ensure Covid-19 social distancing.
The candidates were frisked by hand-held metal detectors and allowed into examination centres after hand sanitization and thermal scanning at the entry points. A maximum of 12 aspirants were seated in each examination hall.
The Rajasthan government made special arrangements, of providing free bus service, for NEET aspirants to reach the examination centres.
The Centre’s decision to conduct NEET and the JEE had drawn criticism from several opposition leaders who questioned the wisdom of the move when the pandemic continues to rage. The education ministry emphasized that not holding the test could lead to a zero year, which would not be in students’ interest.