NEET PG, MDS Aspirants seek deferment of exams, write to Health Ministry

New Delhi: Praying for the postponement of PG medical and dental entrance examinations by 8-10 weeks, the doctors under the umbrella of All India Medical Students' Association have written to the Union Health Ministry.

They have pointed out several issues in their letters including the short time gap between the NEET PG 2021 counseling and the NEET PG 2022 date, and also the troubles of the interns who are ineligible to appear in the NEET PG 2022 and NEET MDS 2022.

The issues that have been mentioned by the doctors in the letter are as follows-

1) The counselling of NEET PG 2021 is still in process and is scheduled to be over by 3rd May 2022. This has resulted in the uncertainty among students as they are in dilemma about proper conduction of counselling and also about the time when it will be over.

Also Read: NEET 2022 aspirants demand postponing exam to August, sign online petition

2) There is a very short time gap between the exam date and the end of the mop up round and it is inadequate for an aspirant to prepare for exam. This creates stressful condition for mid ranker students who form huge chunk of the appearing candidates as they have hope to do better if they do not get seat in the counselling but yet they wont perform well due to lack of time.

3) The students who are left with no seats but did not register due to being busy with counselling or who lost their seats during mop-up cancellation shall require time to prepare as well as register for examination. Squeezing them into the current schedule can be chaotic.

4) And lastly approximately 5000 interns who served during COVID-19 pandemic as COVID warriors are ineligible to appear for the exam due to the delay in their final examination. This happened because they were posted in COVID duties as they had responded to the honorable PM sir's statement of using final year students for COVID duties.

Referring to all these issues, the association mentioned in the letter, "As per the above mentioned issues, we request you to please defer the exam by 8-10 weeks. This deferment will help smooth conduction of counseling while solving rest of the issues. We expect positive response from your side and hopeful that the authorities will help students with the above mentioned request."

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that referring to the insufficient gap between the NEET PG 2021 counselling and the NEET PG 2022 date, the aspirants for the PG medical entrance test had recently written to the President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind and sought deferment of the examination by at least two months.

NEET PG 2022, which is the centralized common entrance test for admission to PG medical courses across India, was earlier scheduled on March 12. However, pointing out that the date was clashing with NEET PG counselling 2021 dates, the doctors had approached the Union Health Ministry seeking postponement. In fact they had moved to the Apex Court as well.

Before the top court could take a call on the matter, the Union Health Ministry itself came to the aid of the students and postponed the exam by 6-8 months. Consequently, NBE rescheduled the exam on May 21. However, the doctors are not so happy with this date as well and they have cited the ongoing counselling for NEET PG 2021 as the reason.

In fact, similar demands for postponement are being made by the NEET UG aspirants as well who also have expressed their concern of preparing for the exam with a short time gap between their board exam and the date for the medical entrance test.

Also Read: Postpone NEET PG 2022: Doctors threaten to surrender Medical Degrees, write to President