New Delhi/Pune: Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) took a U-turn on its decision to conduct National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for undergraduate twice a year. The MHRD, on Tuesday, declared that NEET will be held once in a year and will be a handwritten test.
The Ministry has informed that it will be held in pen and paper mode on May 5. Registration will start from November 1. This decision has come after the Health Ministry raised concerns about conducting the exam twice a year, as they stated it will put additional pressure on students. Moreover, it also expressed that computer-based exam will put students from rural areas at a disadvantage.
Experts, however, stated, once again, the Ministry has created a confusion over the exam. Also, engineering students will have the advantage of two exams whereas medical aspirants will again be left at a disadvantage, they said.
“The previous decision of conducting the exam twice was good. This is a confusing and muddled decision. If they had to reverse their decision, it should have been done for Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) as well,” said Durgesh Mangeshkar, Director and Founder of IITian Prashikshan.
“Medical aspirants actually should get a second chance. Secondly, even the rural area students have access to Internet and smartphones and thus there should not be any difficulty for them to give online exams as many centres provide training and practice sessions for online entrance exams. In fact, online exams are transparent and easy to evaluate,” said Mangeshkar.
Sandeep Deodhar, Director of Deodhar Classes, said, “May be the government is not confident about its infrastructure in rural areas. JEE is already conducted in two ways, online and offline. Besides, if any problem occurs in online exam for engineering, students get a chance for admission through State Common Entrance Test (CET). It is not similar with medical. They get only one chance of national level entrance exam. Hence, if the government is unsure of having proper infrastructure, then the decision to not conduct it twice and online is good. Otherwise it may backfire on them.”
