Six ministers from Opposition-ruled states move SC to review decision to hold NEET, JEE exams amid Covid-19

A review petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Friday by six ministers from the Opposition-ruled states against the August 17 order allowing to hold JEE Mains and NEET UG examination in September, despite 3.31 million Covid-19 cases and about 60,000 deaths in the country.

The petitioners claimed that the court has failed to consider safety, security and right to life of students, besides teething logistical difficulties in conducting the examinations of JEE Mains and NEET UG between September 1 and 6 and 13, respectively.

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The court had on August 17 said though there is a pandemic situation but life has to go and the career of the students cannot be put on peril for long and full academic year cannot be wasted.

"The order is cryptic, non-speaking, does not discuss, let alone enumerate the various aspects and complexities involved in a matter of this magnitude and complex nature," the leaders claimed.

They claimed the intervening months from April to September 2020 were characterised by inaction, confusion, lethargy and inertia, but now the Union Government has suddenly woken up and as a knee-jerk reaction, haphazardly and hurriedly fixed the dates of the examinations that would prove to be worse than the disease itself.

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They said if the examinations are postponed until October, as advised by many experts, there will be no loss of Academic Year 2020-21. This would also enable the government to make adequate arrangement of transportation for the students to reach the centres.

Apart from the pandemic situation, students from the regions affected by heavy rains and floods would further be put to a severe disadvantage situation, the petition filed by advocate Sunil Fernandes said.

The petitioners are Moloy Ghatak, a minister from West Bengal, Rameshwar Oraon from Jharkhand, Raghu Sharma from Rajasthan, Amarjeet Bhagat from Chhattisgarh, Balbir Singh Sidhu from Punjab and Uday Ravindra Samant from Maharashtra.

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According to the National Testing Agency, approximately 9.53 lakh and 15.97 lakh students have registered for JEE (Main) for admission to engineering colleges and NEET UG for admission to medical colleges, respectively.

JEE Mains is slated to be conducted over 660 exam centres and NEET UG at 3,843 centres across the country.

As on August 27, India has over 3.31 million Covid-19 cases and has seen about 60,000 deaths.

"It is rather ironical that at the initial stage when there was much lesser number of Covid-19 positive cases, the examinations were postponed and now when the daily spread of the virus is at its peak, the examinations are directed to be conducted forthwith," the plea stated.