NEET 2021: After months of protest on social media platforms, a section of medical aspirants have now started an online petition seeking postponement of the medical entrance exam – National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2021. Over 1500 students have signed the online petition on change.org already and the numbers are increasing.

In the petition, the students wrote, “If JEE advanced is on October 3 and their academic session can be managed, then why can’t they schedule NEET in October. We don’t have multiple attempts like JEE main. For MBBS, NEET-UG is the only entrance exam (as AIIMS, JIPMER are scrapped out). Medical colleges are only to start in February in India, so a postponement of NEET date by one month won’t be a problem.”

The petition also said, “many students are writing multiple exams along with neet and this would make the exam stress high if the neet date is close to these exams dates.”

“States like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal were hit by heavy rain and flood and the internet connectivity was hampered. Hence, several students from these regions couldn’t fill in the NEET-UG application form. They have requested to extend the application window for the same,” it added

NEET 2021 is scheduled to be held on September 12. It was first scheduled to be held on August 1 and was postponed till September on students demadn. Now, students are demanding that the exam should be held in October. Over 16 lakh students will be participating in the entrance exam in offline mode. Students are requesting the exam-conducting body National Testing Agency (NTA) to postpone the exam to October to prepare better.

Petitioners have requested the Education Minister and the NTA to postpone the exam to ease the students’ mental stress and safety. The petition also stated that every NEET aspirant should get an equal chance to appear in the exam and no student should miss the opportunity.

Students have been demanding the postponement of NEET 2021 for a long time now. They have been trending various hashtags like #ShiftNEETUG2021, #PostponeNEETUGtillOctober, #PostponeNEETUG to defer the medical entrance exam.

Despite the requests from a large number of students, the NTA and the Union Education Ministry have decided to conduct the exam on the scheduled date and they have announced that there will be no change in the schedule as it would further impact the academic cycle.

As per NEET 2021 schedule, the medical entrance exam date is clashing with Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (CET), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), as well as All India Entrance Examination for Admission (AIEEA) UG date.

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