NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday (September 9, 2020) refused to entertain a batch of fresh petitions questioning the National Testing Agency’s move to conduct the NEET-UG examination in the time of coronavirus pandemic.
Refusing to entertain the fresh petitions seeking deferment of the prestigious medical exam, the Supreme Court said that “everything is over now” and even the review petitions have been dismissed.
Some petitions had cited Bihar floods for deferment, while some other the weekend COVID-19 lockdown. However, the apex court said that the authorities will take all steps necessary to help aspirants sit for the test.
Presenting a fresh plea for deferring the NEET exam and requesting for more centres, the senior lawyers of the Supreme Court earlier made last-ditch effort to bring relief to students who have been seeking to postpone NEET 2020 amid the coronavirus scare.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) had recently conducted JEE Main 2020 examination, following which students and experts had questioned how would social distancing be maintained when more number of aspirants would sit for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical courses.
It may be noted that the top court had recently dismissed a review petition filed by ministers of six states, seeking a review of the court’s August 17 order to conduct NEET-UG and JEE (Mains).
A 3-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan was hearing the review petition filed by ministers of six opposition-ruled states seeking review of apex court’s August 17 order, which had allowed the National Testing Agency (NTA) and central government to go ahead with the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) despite Covid-19 pandemic.
The court had said in the August 17 order, “Life has to go on” despite the outbreak of the viral disease and we cannot put the career of students in jeopardy by interfering with the decision of the NTA to hold the examinations in September.
The JEE Main exam started on September 1 and concluded on September 6, while NEET-UG 2020 will be held on September 13.
Nearly 9.5 lakh engineering aspirants registered for JEE Main 2020, while over 15 lakh MBBS (medical) and BDS (dental) aspirants have registered for NEET UG.
