Inconvenient Exam City Allocation: Plea in SC Seeks Postponement of NEET PG 2024 Exam

New Delhi: Amid the uproar from the National Eligibility-and-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024 aspirants over the allocation of exam test centres, a plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking postponement of the exam, scheduled to take place on August 11, 2024.

Filing the plea, the petitioner claimed that many candidates who will appear in the exam have been allocated test cities that are highly inconvenient for them to reach, Live Law has reported.

Approaching the top court, the petitioner submitted that the NEET PG 2024 aspirants were allocated test cities on 31.07.2024 and specific centres are scheduled to be declared on 08.08.2024.

While it was done to curb any malpractice in the examination, the petitioner submitted that given the short notice, it became highly difficult for the students to make arrangements for their travel to their specific cities.

Also Read: What a Mess: NEET PG 2024 Candidates take to social media to resenting Exam Center Allocations

As per the latest media report by Live Law, the petition stated, "...more than two lakh students are scheduled to appear in the aforestated 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."

Apart from deferring the exam, the petitioner also sought a disclosure of the normalization formula of the four sets of question papers to the candidates to eliminate any possibilities of arbitrariness.

"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...there is a likelihood that one batch of candidates may face a more difficult question paper than the other batch," the plea added.

The petitioner has prayed for an order directing the authorities to reschedule the NEET-PG 2024 examination, any other order directing the authorities to conduct the exam in a single batch to ensure that uniform and fair testing environment is given to all candidates.

Further, the petitioner also prayed to the court to issue directions to rectify Examination Centre Allocation Issues and ensure that test centres are allocated more equitably and transparently at nearby places.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the exam city allotment slip for the National Eligibility-and-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024 examination was scheduled to be released by NBEMS on July 31, 2024. Accordingly, on July 31, 2024, students received information about their exam cities.

However, they claimed that NBE allotted them cities that were too far away from their preferred locations. Upset over the "randomly" allotted exam centers, candidates took to social media platforms to express their frustrations. Concerns were raised by Divyangjan candidates as well who had alleged that it would be problematic for them to travel so far away to appear in the exam.

Extending their support to the medical aspirants and raising the issue to the authorities including the Union Health Minister, recently, the doctors under the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) and the United Doctors Front Association (UDFA) have demanded a re-evaluation and correction of the exam centre allocation process to ensure that all candidates, especially Divyangjan, are allocated exam centres within reasonable distances from their home states.

Also Read: Requests for Changing NEET PG 2024 Exam Centres Shall NOT be entertained: NBE