NEET PG 2023: After Health Minister says No to Postponement, Doctors to Approach Court

New Delhi: After the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya clarified that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) examination 2023 is not going to be postponed, the protesting doctors under the Federation of All India Medical Sciences (FAIMA) are now planning to consider the legal options and approach the Court so that the exam gets postponed by 2-3 months.

Assuring that it will give 100% efforts to fight for it, the association further urged all the other organisations to join them in this regard.

Clarifying that the association stands by the NEET PG Aspirants and it never wanted to be in the good books of the Union Health Minister, FAIMA mentioned in a recent Tweet, "We will give our 100% efforts to fight for it. We are thinking over legal aspect of the issue. We request all other organisation too to join us!"

This comes after yesterday the Union Health Minister clarified that the exam shall not be postponed. Medical Dialogues had reported that while responding to the requests of students across the country for postponing the NEET PG 2023 exam, the Minister informed the Lok Sabha that since the exam date had been announced around five months back, the students should not face any problem to prepare for the exam.

Further, the Health Minister pointed out that in order to ensure that none of the students across India suffers due to eligibility criteria, the Government has extended the cut-off date for completing MBBS Internship till August 11, 2023.

Also Read: Demand for NEET PG postponement reverberates in Parliament

The NEET-PG aspirants have been demanding the postponement of the exam for quite some time. Previously, NBE had announced that NEET PG 2023 will be held on March 05, 2023 and it had fixed the Internship deadline as March 31.

Since thousands of candidates were ineligible due to the Internship Deadline, NBE provided relief and extended the deadline to June 30, 2023. Even then several candidates could not clear the eligibility criteria for appearing in the PG medical entrance test.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that taking up the issue of NEET PG aspirants, FAIMA, FORDA Indian Medical Association (IMA) had approached the Union Health Minister.

Now, NBEMS has further extended the Internship Deadline of NEET PG aspirants till August 11 while keeping the exam date same as before. Therefore, the PG medical aspirants are complaining that they have to stand idle for four to five months since the counselling process cannot start before September, 2023.

Earlier, urging the authorities for postponing the exam, the doctors under FAIMA had staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. The representatives of FAIMA from Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) had joined the protest.

Meanwhile, the Union Health Minister clarified that they have allowed all the candidates to appear in the examination and the exam date shall not be postponed for bringing back normalcy of the academic calendar.

Upset with this, FAIMA tweeted about this and announced its decision of considering the legal options to ensure that the exam gets postponed by a few months.

Earlier, the National Chairman of FAIMA, Dr Rohan Krishnan had told Medical Dialogues had only keeping the exam date fixed would not bring the academic calendar back on track. He had pointed out that since the Internship Deadline has been extended till August, the counselling process cannot start before August or September. Therefore, the candidates will be left with no other option but to sit idle at their homes.

In a recent Tweet, Dr Krishnan also mentioned about considering legal routes and take up the matter before the Court.

"Sm battles we win, sm we loose but d courage to fight must prevail. Let’s hope for gud outcm frm Court. Kp studing!! I will try till 4th March!" he mentioned in another Tweet.

Also Read: NEET PG 2023: More than 9500 Aspirants sign online petition praying for postponement