Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday wrote to Union Education Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank seeking postponement of NEET and JEE (Main) Entrance Test in view of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic situation.
“National Testing Agency (NTA) has scheduled to conduct the JEE (Main) and NEET, 2020 test for admission into the technical and medical courses on September 1-6 and September 13, respectively. More than 50,000 students from Odisha are appearing in NEET and around 40,000 in JEE (Main) this year. However, NTA has opened examination centres for the tests in seven townships of the State only,” wrote Patnaik.
Patnaik said, “In this context, I would like to say that in view of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic situation in the country, it would be highly unsafe and perilous for the syudents to visit the test centres physically to appear in this tests. Besides, as frequent lockdown/shutdown due to sudden escalation of the COVID positive case locally, the local transportation too gets disrupted.”
Further, the Chief Minister said, Odisha has got vast tribal pockets having geographically inaccessible areas, far away from the urban centres of the State.
“In view of this, it is requested that the ensuing JEE (Main) and NEEET examinations may be postponed to a later date. Besides, whenever NTA hold these tests, it may be directed to open centres in all the 30 districts of the State so that students have to travel maximum 2-3 hours to reach the test centres and go back home the same day,” said Patnaik.
