NEET 2022: Aspirants trend #MODIJIextendNEETUG, Education Ministry dismisses chances for postponement

New Delhi: Escalating the demands for postponing the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET UG) 2022 further, the aspirants have now started trending #MODIJIextendNEETUG on Twitter.

Supporting the demands, the President of National Students' Union of India (NSUI), Neeraj Kundan has written to the Union Education Minister urging him to defer the exam by atleast 45 days.

While on the one hand, the demands for postponing the exam is escalating by the day, the officials of ministry of education have clarified to TOI that the NEET UG 2022 will not be rescheduled.

Medical Dialogues had been reporting about the escalating demands from the NEET UG 2022 aspirants seeking deferment of the exam by one month. Earlier around 10,000 aspirants had written to National Testing Agency (NTA) requesting to postpone the exam and allocate them with enough time for preparation. Writing to the agency, the aspirants had pointed out how the counselling for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test 2021 was incomplete and the scheduled date for NEET on July 17 is almost clashing with the dates for CUET & JEE Mains.

"There are lakhs of students who prepare for medical examination every year and this number is increasing every year. With millions of hope sticking, the process should not start or end in a hurry, " read the letter.

NSUI has referred to various reasons for postponing the exam including- the delayed counselling for the previous academic session, schedule of CUET, JEE and other exams in July, short time for preparation, problems faced by students who did not get a seat in the previous round of counselling, etc.

Referring to these factors, the letter by NSUI President mentioned, "Considering the genuine reasons stated above, kindly defer the NEET UG examination atleast for 45 days. So that students are both mentally & psychologically fit to appear in the examination."

While there is hardly two weeks left for the examination, the aspirants are praying for postponement of the exam continuously on Twitter. Using the hashtag #MODIJIextendNEETUG, the candidates are questioning if JEE could be postponed, why the same cannot be done for NEET aspirants as well?

This hashtag gained popularity yesterday with millions of Tweets requesting the authorities to defer the exam. Some of the aspirants directly blamed the Union Education Minister for playing with the future of the students.

Furious with the authorities for paying no heed to the continuous requests from the students for the past 40 days, some of the Twitter users have even started using hashtag #RemoveDharmendraPradhan.

Taking a step further ahead, some of the Twitter users shared some numbers and claiming them to be of the Union Education Minister, they urged everyone to call the Minister.

Although the demands for postponing the exam is escalating day by day, only a few days ago, PIB Fact Check shared a fake notice regarding exam postponement and warned the aspirants not to believe such news. With no response from the authorities, such a warning from PIB hinted strongly that the exam is unlikely to get deferred.

As per the latest media report by the Times of India, senior officials from the ministry of of education have confirmed that NEET UG 2022 will not be rescheduled. Referring to the previous years, when exam had to be deferred several times because of the Covid-19 pandemic that ultimately disrupted the academic calendars, the officials pointed out that there is no such reason this time for deferring the exam. They also mentioned that all the agencies and institutes are now working together to bring the academic calendar back to pre-pandemic era.