'Hunger strike. Postpone JEE and NEET,' read a placard that Sanjeev Yadav held. This diffabled 23-year-old from Uttar Pradesh holds the placard while balancing a pair of crutches on both hands as he poses for a photograph.
Sanjeev is neither planning to write neither JEE nor NEET. He has his own reasons to protest. "After the Supreme Court decided not to postpone the entrances, a friend of mine, who was planning to write JEE and NEET attempted to die by suicide. I couldn't take it. So, I decided to do my bit to support him," he says. Sanjeev also says that his strike is indefinite and that he will fast until the government decides to postpone the exams.
While the initial plan was to protest on the road, he decided to do it indoors later. "My sister is a doctor and she advised me to not go on the road. She was worried that I might contract the Coronavirus," he says.
Students across the country have been trying every possible way to get their voice heard, to reach the concerned authorities and get the JEE, NEET and other entrances postponed during the pandemic. A few of them are also observing August 27 as a black day, by replacing their Twitter profile pictures with a black dot.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) will be holding the JEE Mains from September 1 to 6 and NEET on September 13. A large number of students and parents have opposed this decision and sought postponement of the exams, citing a massive increase in the number of daily COVID cases and death toll. Even though a group of students had petitioned the Supreme Court about this, the petition was dismissed, stating that students' career cannot be put in jeopardy.
