Nandurbar teen's exhausting journey to her NEET centre in Kandivali

A 7-hour car ride was followed by a 2-hour bus trip and then an auto journey, with barely any sleep

Covering 400 kilometres by road in a night, a student from Nandurbar made an exhausting journey to her NEET centre in Kandivali on Sunday. Angel Gavit, 17, a student from Navapur taluka in Nandurbar, set off from her home at 9 pm on Saturday with her sister and a friend. The family hired a private vehicle for Rs 13,000.

She reached her uncle’s place in Thane at 4 am. With barely a few hours of rest, Angel made another two-hour journey from Thane to Borivali on an ST bus and then in an auto from Borivali to Kandivali. “The journey was exhausting, but I am prepared and not tense,” Angel told Mirror outside Thakur College in Kandivali, the centre allotted to her.

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), for admission to medical and dental courses, took place on Sunday after the Supreme Court dismissed pleas to postpone it.

There were other candidates who had to come from far-off places such as Nashik and Dahanu at the Thakur College centre, which was among the largest centres in the city with 1,200 candidates. "Our college is a NEET centre for the first time. The NTA officials checked our infrastructure and allotted us the strength of three centres," said principal Dr C T Chakraborty.

With a large number of candidates arriving with parents, even entire families in some cases, there was a huge rush in the morning near the college. The police had to barricade a portion of the road to regulate the traffic flow. The college staff asked parents to move 200 metres away from the centre. The college opened up its adjoining ground for parents.

With social distancing guidelines, the college accommodated 12 students per classroom. "We sat one student on every third bench and that too in a zig-zag manner. A separate room was reserved for symptomatic students. We had one student with a high temperature and he sat in the isolated room," Dr. Chakraborty said.

Around 200 staff members of the college were involved in conducting the exam. Dr Chakraborty said the government had provided disposable masks, sanitisers and stationery.

Sion or Navi Mumbai?

Meanwhile, at Sion's Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil Pratishthan's College of Engineering, there was some confusion among parents and candidates as the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts NEET, had mistakenly cited the address as Navi Mumbai. On September 10, NTA changed the centre of candidates from the Nirmala Niketan College in Churchgate to Vasantdada Patil College.

"The NTA gave the correct Mumbai pin code, but said Navi Mumbai instead, which led to confusion. Thankfully, I had realized the error in time and wrote to NTA to make a correction," said a parent from Bhayandar, Dr Suwas Darvekar.

Sudha Shenoy, a parent representative, said as per the feedback received from students, the exam arrangements were better this year, except for reports of some chaos at SIWS college in Wadala, where the entry was delayed until after 11 am and parents confronted college officials.

College principal Dr Usha Sukumar Iyer said the digital cards of two boxes of question papers failed to open, due to which there was a 20-minute delay for two classrooms. "We called the NTA officials, who asked us to break the box. We gave an additional 20 minutes to the students and the issue was resolved," she said.

Around 16 lakh candidates registered for the test across India. At 2.28 lakh registrations, Maharashtra had the highest number of candidates spread over 615 centres.