New Delhi: The Supreme Court said it will hear on Friday a plea seeking postponement of the NEET-PG examination, which is scheduled on August 11, claiming that candidates have been allocated cities that are highly inconvenient for them to reach.
Advocate Anas Tanwir mentioned the matter before a bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra on Thursday. The bench said it will list the matter on Friday.
The plea filed by Vishal Soren and others said that the petitioners and many similarly placed candidates have been allocated cities that are highly inconvenient for them to reach.
"It is further submitted that the Respondent No. 01 (National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences) had announced the date of examination will be on 11.08.2024 and will be conducted in two batches. The fact that the examinations will be conducted in two batches and that the formula for normalisation is unknown to the candidates thereby causing an apprehension to the Petitioners herein," said the plea.
The plea said that there is a likelihood that one batch of candidates may face a more difficult question paper than the other batch. "Therefore, it is prayed that the formula for normalisation should be disclosed before the conduct of examinations thereby ruling out any fear of arbitrariness," it said.
The plea submitted that more than two lakh students are scheduled to appear in the examination. "The examination is scheduled to be held in 185 test cities therefore resulting in non-availability of train tickets as well as hiking of air fares due to dynamic pricing thereby making it almost impossible for a large number of students to reach their test centres," it said.
"Issue a writ in the nature of Mandamus ...the Respondents (National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences and others) to reschedule the NEET-PG 2024 examination," stated the plea. The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-Postgraduate exam was initially supposed to be held on June 23. It was postponed by the Union Health Ministry as a "precautionary measure" in the wake of alleged irregularities in certain competitive exams.
