NEET exam row: Congress running away from discussion in Parliament, says education minister

NEW DELHI: A day after Rahul Gandhi demanded "respectful" discussion on the NEET paper leak issue in Parliament, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan criticised the Congress party saying it does not want a debate but only wants to create "chaos".
"The Congress does not want a discussion. It wants to run away from the discussion. Its only intention is to create chaos, confusion and obstacles in smooth functioning of the entire institutional mechanism," Pradhan said.
He pointed out that the opposition had an opportunity to discuss this issue during the motion of thanks to the President's address.He emphasized that the government was prepared for any discussion on the matter.
"But the Congress wants to play politics over the matter. It is not the time to play politics," he said.
Adding that he "couldn't justify" the irregularities that occurred in the NEET exam, Pradhan said that such cases also occurred before 2014.
Regarding measures for error-free examinations, the minister mentioned the formation of a high-level committee led by former Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan to oversee reforms within the National Testing Agency (NTA).
"A strong law has been formed against public examination and disruption," he said.
Rahul Gandhi on Friday had alleged that a discussion on NEET was not allowed in Parliament on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a video message, Rahul said, "It is unfortunate that the government did not want a debate. It seemed to me that the direction was directly from the Prime Minister."
The NTA conducted NEET-UG on May 5, with approximately 24 lakh candidates participating. The results were released on June 4, but were soon followed by accusations of question paper leaks in states like Bihar, along with other reported irregularities.