On Monday, the Supreme Court had ordered the National Testing Agency to conduct the second phase of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test on October 14, while hearing a PIL filed by the CBSE. This examination will be for students who had missed NEET on September 13, owing to COVID-19 or due to being stuck in containment zones.

The order has come has a huge relief for parent associations who have been demanding this for the past few weeks. According to the NTA statistics, around 1.6 lakh students missed the exam this year.

On September 17, the NCR Parents' Association had submitted a memorandum to the NTA, demanding the same. Additionally, it had also sought relief for students who had COVID symptoms and were barred from writing the examination owing to the same. "This is a huge relief," says Sukhpal Singh Toor, the association's founder. "However, the directives aren't quite clear. We need to find out if the NTA will also allow symptomatic students who were denied entry," he says. They had also stated that a lot of students had missed the exam after being stuck in flood-affected regions and the case of a student who travelled 700 kilometres to reach his exam centre, only to miss the exam by 15 minutes.

At the same time, the students who have written to the NTA stating their reason for missing NEET have received responses from the agency, seeking details of the containment zones they are in.