The Indian Express
Over 85% attended NEET 2020: Education Minister
NEET 2020: Around 85-90 per cent of students had appeared for the medical entrance examination, claims Education Minister. Over 15.9 lakh students from across India had registered for NEET 2020.
by Education DeskOf the 15.9 lakh student who had registered for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), about 85-90 per cent have appeared for the exam despite the pandemic, the Union Minister for Education, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank claims. The exam was held today across over 3800 exam centres across India. The minister thanked all the state chief ministers and the exam conducting body – National Testing Agency (NTA) “for making proper arrangements”.
“NTA informed me that around 85-90% students appeared in #NEET exam today. I sincerely thank all Chief Ministers and @DG_NTA for proper arrangements made to facilitate student participation. #NEET participation reflects the tenacity and grit of young #AtmaNirbharBharat (sic),” the Minister wrote in his tweet.
Most of the students indianexpress.com interacted with found the NEET 2020 to be an easy exam. Experts too believe that questions were straight out of NCERTs. Those who score at least 50 percentile in NEET will be considered as pass, however, candidates will be selected based on merit. Counselling will be conducted after the result is announced.
A section of students was against holding the exam amid the pandemic. The medical entrance exam was scheduled to be held in May but was postponed twice due to the pandemic. Recently the Supreme Court had rejected a petition seeking further postponement stating that authorities have made all the arrangements. The apex court had earlier said that the “career of students cannot be put under jeopardy for long.”
NTA also claims to have provided sanitisation of exam halls, masks, gloves etc at the exam centres. For NEET, the number of candidates per room has been reduced from earlier 24 to 12, now, the NTA said in an official notice. NEET is a single entrance exam for Indian students seeking admission to undergraduate medical courses. The exam was recently made mandatory for students seeking to go abroad to study medicine as the minimum qualification exam.