Deferring NEET PG 2024 Cost NBE Rs 11 Crore Extra, Reveals RTI
New Delhi: Postponing the National Eligibility-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024 examination at the last minute following the Supreme Court's directions turned out to be a costly affair for the Government.
According to a recent RTI reply from the National Board of Examinations (NBE), which conducts the NEET PG examination, the board had already paid Rs 11.02 crore to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for holding the exam in June, as initially scheduled.
Even though the exam was initially scheduled for June 23, 2024, Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the Union Health Ministry postponed the exam at the last minute as a precautionary measure due to concerns about the integrity of the examination process. The Ministry had taken this decision amid allegations of irregularities in certain competitive examinations. Consequently, the exam was eventually held on August 11, 2024.
For this purpose, NBE had to pay the TCS Rs 13.24 crore more. Among this amount, Rs 12,34,39,025 was spent on CBT conduct and Rs 89,58,768 was sent for CCTV Feed.
Also Read: NEET PG 2024 Was Postponed Due to 'Impersonation' Threats: Report
Combining the cost of the examination previously scheduled in June and the exam finally being held in August, the total cost for conducting the NEET PG 2024 exam turned out to be more than Rs 24 crore.
The amount is almost double of what was spent on conducting the NEET PG 2023 exam. The RTI, filed by Dr. Aman Kaushik, revealed that for conducting the NEET PG 2023 exam, NBE spent Rs 13,29,63,577.
Commenting on the matter, Dr. Aman Kaushik, who filed the RTI, told Medical Dialogues, "The cancellation of NEET PG 2024 not only created undue stress among candidates, but it also created a loss of 11 crore as NBE paid this amount to TCS for the cancellation of the exam. The government must take steps and necessary action to prevent these instances in the future."
This year, the NEET PG exam was scheduled to be held in June. However, the exam had to be postponed to August 3 after the Supreme Court held that a two-shift exam would lead to arbitrariness. NBE announced the revised date for NEET PG 2025 after the Apex Court directed the Board to make arrangements for holding the exam in a single shift.
Speaking to Medical Dialogues in this regard, Dr. Rohan Krishnan, a Health Activist and a patron of FAIMA Doctors Association, said, "It is very sad of affairs that the public fund and the money which is taken from the students are being distributed in such a way that it has no value whatsoever. From the very first day, we were always of the purview that the NEET PG is an exam that is conducted by an authority which does not want to conduct the exam, it seems. Even if you want a pencil or paper for the NEET PG examination, you will have to go to the Supreme Court. So, what happens is that you always have to go to the honourable court for any kind of changes in the examination pattern."
"The NEET PG 2024 exam, which was postponed on the last date when many doctors' associations and organisations had written to them that they should postpone it way before that and they postponed it on the last date and this led to harassment of various aspirants because the centres were allotted to different cities and many students were at their centres at that time and they have reached another city and booked their tickets and hotels and everything. And at the last moment, it was changed and it was not properly known to the students. And now it is coming to light that payments were made. I think for conducting an examination, part payment should have been done. Not more than 50% of payments should have been done in advance because suppose a payment is being done for a CCTV requirement and it turns out that the CCTV was not utilised and the data was not saved- in all such cases, there is no point of doing full payment, that too when we are not cancelling the examination system, we are just postponing it," he opined.
Also Read: NEET PG 2025 to be held on August 3 in Single Shift
