Setback to aspirants: Delhi HC junks plea demanding NEET 2022 Postponement

New Delhi: Denying relief on the exam schedule of MBBS entrance test, the Delhi High Court has dismissed the plea filed by 15 aspirants seeking postponement of the NEET 2022 exam.

With this, as per the schedule, the National Testing Agency will conduct the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (UG) for 1872341 candidates at different Centres located in 497 Cities throughout the country including 14 Cities Outside India on 17 July 2022 (Sunday) from 02:00 P.M. to 05:20 P.M. (Indian Standard Time). The NEET 2022 admit cards are already out and candidates can download the same from the official website of NTA.

"This is totally a misconceived petition. It's just because these are students, the court will not be harsh. Had it been anyone else, this would have been dismissed with costs", a single bench of Justice Sanjeev Narula orally said while concluding the case, as quoted by Livelaw.

"The pressure can only be eased by self study, not by the manner you are doing this. I wish the students all the best", Justice Narula said.

The plea:

The bench was hearing a petition filed by NEET-UG 2022 aspirants seeking directions against the National Testing Agency for setting aside the examination schedule of NEET 2022 and rescheduling it after 4-6 weeks. The petitioners are 15 students from different parts of the country- UP, Kerala, Assam, Jharkhand, Telangana, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Maharashtra. The petitioners have argued that the unorganized schedule of National Level examinations i.e. NEET UG 2022, JEE 2022 and CUET 2022 has caused immense mental trauma to students resulting in 16 reported suicides of young students.

The petitioners also stated that considering the current torrential flood situation across nation affecting major states in the country, wherein many authorities have already postponed their examinations, respondents can also be directed to reschedule the NEET-UG 2022 examination.

The hearing:

During the hearing, on the question raised by the bench as to why the candidates are approaching the Court now, when the schedule of the exam was known in April 2022, the counsel appearing for the aspirants submitted that the admit cards were only issued recently and that the petitioners had been pursuing representations before various authorities.

"How can 15 students ask for rescheduling of the exam? Such petitions should be discouraged", Justice Narula said.

The petitioners' counsel that 218 people died in floods across the country, the bench said that being the Monsoon season, such things happen, and that cannot be the basis for relief.

The counsel then submitted that there was only a short gap between major exams like CUET, JEET and NEET and this was putting the students under immense pressure.

At this outset, the bench said "then that is good for you- having common subjects will be good for preparation, everything will be fresh in your mind".

The exam pressure was also brought forward before the bench and on this it was submitted that 17 students have committed suicide due to exam pressure. "These are vague statements. How can you say that the students have committed suicide because of the exam? I will not go by newspaper reports", Justice Narula replied on the matter.

On the counsel's submission regarding the travel difficulties of the students, the bench said "You have to make out which petitioner is giving what exam and from where he has to travel."

"I'm sorry, petitioners didn't give details because they were scared that authorities will take adverse action", the counsel replied.

"No students should be scared. This court is here to help them. But you have to be specific. They're approaching the court through a counsel", the Court said.

Thereafter, the counsel appearing for the National Testing Agency (NTA) told the bench that more than 90% students have downloaded the admit cards. Delay in holding the exam will have a spillover effect on future academic sessions, the NTA counsel said. The counsel added that in 2020 and 2021 also similar demands were raised, which the Courts refused to entertain.

"I don't want to give any anxiety to other students so I will just give the operative portion of the order.These are students so I am not being harsh but in other matters of this nature, I would not shy from imposing costs. Dismissed", Justice Narula said as the hearing concluded, quotes LiveLaw.

Medical Dialogues has been extensively reporting about the continuous demand of aspirants seeking deferment of NEET exam. Although the aspirants have been demanding postponement for months, they have not given any positive response.

Recently, the aspirants listed down all the points for which NEET 2022 should be deferred in the 19 pages long memorandum and submitted it to the Union Education MInistry.

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.

In order to press for demands of deferring the exam, the aspirants wrote to the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, initiated online petitions, used hashtags such as #postponeneetug2022, #JusticeforNeetStudents, #MODIJIdeferNEETUG, #PMOHelpNEETUGAspirants to reach the authorities.

India Wide Parents Association and the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) supported their demands and urged the authorities to defer the exam by at least 40-45 days. In fact, the aspirants had decided to initiate hunger strike. Some of the representatives of the aspirants reached the Prime Minister's office and demanded to meet PM Narendra Modi to express the grievances of the students.