Petitions seeking postponement of NEET-JEE rejected: Exams must go on says SC

New Delhi, Aug 17: The Supreme Court has rejected a petition that sought postponement of NEET and JEE.

The petitioners demanded that the exams be postponed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Justice Arun Mishra, while rejecting the petitions said education must be opened up. COVID may continue for a year more. Are you going to wait for another year.

Do you know what is the loss to the country and peril to the students, Justice Mishra said.

The exam body, however, said that the exams must go on.

Justice Mishra also said, 'are you not demanding that the court should be opened up amid COVID-19? Do you see this glass partition fixed here. When we are getting ready to open up, you say that the exams should not be held, Justice Mishra also said.

While referring to the coronavirus pandemic, the plea had sought quashing of July 3 notices issued by the National Testing Agency (NTA), by which it was decided to conduct Joint Entrance Examination (Main) April 2020 and National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-Undergraduate exams in September.

The plea, filed by 11 students belonging to 11 states, said that the authorities be directed to conduct these exams only after the normalcy is restored.

As per the public notices issued by the NTA, JEE (Main) April 2020 is scheduled from September 1-6, while NEET UG 2020 exam is scheduled for September 13.

The plea, filed through advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, had also sought direction to the authorities to increase the number of examination centres for these exams.

"Conducting the aforesaid examination across India at such perilous time, is nothing else but putting lives of lakhs of young students (including petitioners herein) at utmost risk and danger of disease and death. The best recourse at this stage can be to wait for some more time, let COVID-19 crisis subside and then only conduct these exams, in order to save lives of the students and their parents," the plea said.

It claimed that NTA, which conducts entrance exams for admission in higher educational institutions in India, has decided to conduct JEE (Main) April-2020 through online mode and NEET UG-2020 exams through offline mode at 161 centres across India.

It alleged that NTA has indefinitely postponed the National Council of Hotel Management Joint Entrance Examination 2020, which was scheduled to be conducted on June 22, in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.