Dreams on hold, careers at stake, stress shooting up: Students land in NEET mess

NEW DELHI/NOIDA: Wasted time, wasted effort, wasted money, but above all, gnawing fear of a wasted year.
On the morning that they were prepared to write a competitive exam that would determine the course of their medical careers and the rest of their lives, scores of young men and women huddled in agony around small notices pasted on boards outside their centres that said the NEET-PG exam had been postponed and would be ‘notified at the earliest’.
The decision to postpone NEET-PG was announced by govt late Saturday night. Some were unaware, some were unsure what to believe so they reached the venues anyway, and some hoped to find answers to their immediate next question – what would the next date of the exam be?
There was no clarity whatsoever on offer. At the venues, each candidate echoed the other’s confusion and anxiety, and distress building up about days in the academic calendar slipping away. Indignation was directed at the National Testing Agency (NTA), which many candidates called “irresponsible”.
Among the 2 lakh candidates who were to sit for NEET-PG, there were many who had travelled long distances and following carefully nurtured dreams to reach the exam centres – like Neha Tabassum, who came to Noida from Jammu with her husband spending Rs 12,000 on tickets and a hotel, money that went down the drain. “I discovered the exam was postponed only when I was on my way to the centre in the morning. It took two years of preparation, and this would have been my second attempt. What kind of exam arrangement is this? It’s frustrating,” she said.
Sunanda Pansari, who came to an exam centre in Bhubaneswar from Kalahandi in Odisha, 600km away, said it was exasperating that the exam’s dates had been changed four times. “This is extremely wrong. I have travelled 600km to attend the exam. We should have been informed at least 24 hours in advance about the decision. There is also no information (from govt) on the paper leak as of now,” she said, referring to the NEET-UG fiasco.
K Nageswara Rao, whose son was to take the exam in Visakhapatnam, travelled 200km to reach the Andhra Pradesh capital from East Godavari. “It was a bolt from the blue,” he said of the sudden cancellation. “No one has a clue when the exam will be held next. My son quit his job to prepare for a year. Now, he is not sure what to do, go back to working immediately or wait till the exam dates are announced again,” he said.
Sankha Mandal, a medical officer with the railways who was to appear for NEET-PG at a centre in Kolkata, was similarly distraught. “It’s very tough to prepare for such a tough competitive exam while working a full-time job. The indefinite wait for the next date is painful,” he said.
Outside iON Digital Zone in Noida, one the exam venues in Delhi-NCR, K Murli from Bangalore, who has been staying in Delhi to prepare for NEET PG, said the exam’s dates had anyway been changed three times already and the uncertainty has driven up stress levels. “The first date for NEET PG this year was March 3, then it was postponed to July 7 and again advanced to June 23. Now, it has been postponed till further notice, this time just 12 hours before the exam. This uncertainty is extremely stressful. The exam system and management need to think from a student’s perspective,” he said.
Lambasting NTA, whose director-general Subodh Singh was removed by govt on Saturday evening as the nodal examination body battles a crisis, Atul, an MBBS graduate from Delhi, asked, “How does one pursue academics in such a shaky and mismanaged scenario? This is the third major exam to be cancelled within a week after UGC-NET and CSIR-UGC NET.”
Another MBBS grad, Ankit, who lives in Ghaziabad, said he left his job just to prepare for NEET PG. “I am shocked by the uncertainty about a national exam like NEET,” he said.
Neelam Upadhyay, a Delhi resident, knew about the postponement, but felt she could not trust anything till she saw for herself because of the amount of misinformation that swirls around. So she landed up at the Noida centre. “I came just to check if the notification about the exam cancellation was actually real or fake news,” she said.
Renu Aggarwal, the chief medical superintendent of the district hospital in Noida was there too, not as a govt representative but as a mother. Her son was to appear for NEET PG. “If they wanted to postpone the exam for security reasons, they should have done it earlier, giving time to students. Many students got harassed due to this sudden change,” she said.
Ankita, a candidate from Gurgaon, said postponement was annoying, but “it is better this way than to rewrite the paper, if a paper leak were to be found”.
Outside an exam centre in Jaipur, Yash Dubey, a practising doctor, pointed out that the delay would prove costly for some candidates. “There are many candidates who are opting for Institute of National Importance Combined Entrance Test (INI-CET) counselling to get a PG seat at AIIMS. Those who get a seat via INI-CET but give it up have to pay Rs 3 lakh. Now, with a delay in NEET-PG, candidates who thought of bettering their rank and landing a seat in their desired course at AIIMS, will have to take up seats in whichever courses they have got at present through INI-CET. This will at least assure them of a PG seat. Later, however, if they get their desired course through NEET-PG, they will have to vacate the INI-CET seat, and for this, have to pay Rs 3 lakh. How is this fair?” he asked.