NEET MDS Aspirants move Supreme Court Seeking Postponement
New Delhi: Amid the demands of the NEET MDS 2024 aspirants to defer the exam to July, the students have now sought legal help as they have filed a petition in this regard before the Supreme Court.
The aspirants have argued that they require more time for adequate preparation. Therefore, they have approached the Apex Court bench with a hope for a favourable resolution from the judiciary ensuring fairness and equal opportunity.
The NEET-MDS 2024 is the eligibility cum ranking examination for admission to various MDS courses for 2024-2025 admissions. It is conducted by the National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences (NBEMS). Although earlier the academic calendar released by NBE had informed the tentative date for NEET MDS 2024 to be 9th February 2024, it has now been postponed to 18th March, 2024.
Issuing a notice on 20th January 2024, NBE further informed that the cut-off date for eligibility to appear in the NEET MDS 2024 exam shall be 31st March 2024.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the NEET MDS aspirants had been demanding the postponement of the exam to July like the NEET PG examination. They were expressing these demands on the social media platforms.
They are demanding the postponement of the exam to July while highlighting that even if the exam is conducted in March, the counselling would not commence soon.
According to the MDS aspirants, the counselling process for the NEET PG examination and NEET MDS are always conducted together. Therefore, with the NEET PG getting postponed to July, it is unlikely that NEET MDS counselling would be held anytime soon. Terming it to be an "injustice", the aspirants have been demanding that the NEET MDS exam also get postponed till July.
Online petitions have already been launched by the candidates highlighting the fact that the commencement of the NEET MDS 2024 in March is causing extreme emotional distress as they don't have enough time to prepare for the exam. The aspirants filed several online petitions seeking the postponement of the exam on change.org a few days ago and it had been already signed by around 8000 aspirants in total.
In one of the recent copies of several online petitions circulating on social media, over 2,760 candidates have signed it as they pointed out that they are facing immense mental stress and pressure because of the NEET MDS schedule in March.
As per the latest media report by the Times of India, a group of ineligible aspirants lodged a petition with the Supreme Court demanding postponement of the NEET MDS exam to July, aligning it with the schedule for NEET PG, so that aspirants get adequate preparation time. The matter got provisionally listed for hearing on February 16. The Daily adds that the plea was initially filed by eleven petitioners on February 8.
The aspirants approached the Supreme Court after they did not get any favourable results from the authorities, despite their multiple appeals to various authorities including the National Medical Commission (NMC), the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MohFW), and the Dental Council of India (DCI).
