NEET PG 2023 postponement demand reaches court, here is why students have been protesting

NEET PG 2023 exam is less than a month away and aspirants have been protesting for the postponement of the exam. The issue for the postponement of the exam which is scheduled to be held on March 5, has also reached into the hands of courts right now. On February 14 the students filed a case in the Supreme Court.

Dr Rohan Krishnan, National Chairman of Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) a non profit organisation that had been actively raising the voice of the NEET PG 2023 aspirants to the Health Ministry told CNBC-TV18.com that they will get a diary number tomorrow and get listing then the hearing can be expected within three to four days.

Meanwhile a petition was also filed in the High Court of Telangana by the students for the same. As per the website collegedekho quoting official sources from the Telangana High Court the latest update is that the High Court has asked the National Medical Commission to reconsider the exam date. NMC will decide in two weeks that will the exam get postponed or not. CNBC-TV18 could not confirm the information.

Notably a group of students on February 7 started a petition for the postponement of the exam on Change.org and so far more than 14,000 people have signed the petition.

Why are the students demanding the postponement?

NEET PG is the entrance exam that students need to pass to pursue their masters in medicine in India. To sit for the exam the students are required to possess an MBBS degree or Provisional MBBS Pass Certificate recognised by the Indian Medical Council Act 1956. With that they are also required to have completed the one year mandatory internship.

Now NEET PG examination happens in March every year but in past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic that exam was conducted in later months. NEET PG 2021 exam happened in September while NEET PG 2022 happened in May.

This year the government decided to bring back the pre pandemic dates. With that the eligibility criteria for the one year mandatory internship was that the students should have completed the internship by March 31. The aspirants then protested to extend the date for completion of internship as because with March 31 date nearly half the students from the current batch of applicants would have been ineligible. The pandemic resulted in delays of the medical academic calendar over the last three years resulting in the internship completion time to be delayed.

In response to this on February 11, the National Board of Examination (NBE) that conducts the screening test for post-graduate medical courses extended the internship cut-off date to August 11, making 13,000 additional students from five states eligible for the 2023 examination.

Doctors' associations and aspirants, however, are urging the date of the exam to be postponed. The applicants have been demanding for the exam to be postponed by two to three months to close the gap between the result announcement and the counselling procedure.

“The entrance exam will happen in March and the counselling will happen in August. This means a five month gap between the exam and the counselling. The students will not be doing any job in these five months and can use this time to study for the examination and pursue their dreams,” said Krishnan. Read More On..