With March 31 as Internship Completion date, Karnataka NEET MDS aspirants in trouble

Bengaluru: Internship completion deadline has become an obstacle for the NEET MDS candidates too since several aspirants from Karnataka are ineligible for the exam as they will complete their internship after the deadline.

While the National Board of Examinations (NBE) has fixed the Internship Completion date for BDS graduates as March 31, several postgraduate dental aspirants from Karnataka will complete their internship in April-May.

Even though NBE had provided relief to the NEET PG candidates who were facing similar problems, and extended their Internship Deadline to June 30, no such relief has been offered to the NEET MDS candidates.

Already the students have written to the Dental Council of India (DCI) and NBE seeking relief. They have pointed out that if the exam is conducted on its scheduled date i.e. March 1, 2023, then the students from the current batch will not get any chance to appear for the examination.

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Referring to the fact that NBE has fixed the Internship deadline as March 31, a student told the Times of India, "However, many of our internships will end in April-May, owing to a disruption in our academic calendar by Covid-19 over the past few years. Every year it is the same issue as the pandemic has delayed the exams, announcement of results, and beginning of internships. While eligibility for NEET-PG 2023 has been extended till June 30, 2023, nothing has been changed for us."

Explaining that they are only demanding for extension of the Internship Deadline, the student further added, “We aren’t seeking postponement of the exam, but an extension of the date of completion of our internships.”

While commenting on the matter, the dean-cum-director of Government Dental College, Bengaluru, Girish Giraddi mentioned, “If the exam is held on March 1, there will be no new students to write. The current batch will not be eligible and the previous batch has already written once. The number of students writing the exam will be low. Many of our students will finish internships by June. My suggestion is the exams be put off by six months.”

Meanwhile, the last date of registration for the NEET MDS examination ended on January 30 and referring to this, the Vice-chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) told TOI, “We had written to NBE about the issue with medical students. The case of dental students had not come to our notice. If there is an issue, we’ll raise it.”

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that taking cognizance of the fact that several candidates were termed ineligible for appearing in the NEET PG examination, NBE had extended the Internship deadline till June 30. After the NBE relief, the doctors have now pointed out that the counselling cannot commence before the completion of Internship period and therefore, they have urged the authorities for postponing the exam.

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