It would be an understatement to say that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduate 2024 (NEET-PG 2024) has been contentious. Much like its undergraduate counterpart (NEET-UG 2024), NEET-PG 2024 was filled with controversies.
Repeated postponements and cancellations, sudden changes in the exam pattern, several court cases, allegations of exam discrepancies, accusations of lack of transparency against the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), rows over the scores, and delays in counselling in several states, the exam and its conduct has been a cause of stress and worry for aspirants across the country.
For aspirants in Telangana, in particular, tensions over the counselling process increased manifold when the State Government issued an amendment to the Telangana Medical Colleges (Admission into Postgraduate Medical Courses) Rules, 2021, on October 28, through Government Order 148 (GO 148).
The GO prevented students who finished their school education in states outside Telangana from appearing for the Telangana State Counselling, even if they studied MBBS in the state.
Aspirants from Telangana approached the Telangana High Court, which stayed the counselling until it delivered its judgement. Finally, when the High Court ordered GO 148 to be revoked on December 17, the Telangana State Government moved to the Supreme Court of India against the High Court’s order. The apex court refused to stay the order issued by the High Court on December 20.
Amidst these legal tussles between the aspirants and the Government of Telangana, the State Counselling process has been delayed and is yet to begin. The Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS), which is responsible for counselling in Telangana, released the final merit list on December 30.
With the State counselling finally showing signs of moving ahead, aspirants recall the stress they underwent during the course of NEET-PG 2024.
Delay in state counselling left aspirants in a lurch
The overwhelming sense among NEET-PG aspirants from Telangana throughout the year, particularly during the hearing, was a sense of helplessness for not being able to appear for the state counselling.
“A lot of candidates from Telangana wanted to appear for the State Counselling because they wanted to study in their own state, which is familiar to them. A lot of us didn’t want to leave Telangana due to linguistic and cultural differences,” Sai*, a NEET-PG aspirant told EdexLive, on the condition of anonymity.
He added that choosing a seat outside Telangana would bring a lot of inconveniences for students, particularly during their residency period. “We would have to pull 48-hour shifts, and it would be difficult to interact with patients when there is a language barrier. As doctors, our safety is also at stake here. Doing our postgraduation in Telangana would ensure that such problems are at least slightly alleviated, and would even keep our parents from worrying too much,” he explains.
Aspirants say that they are being pushed to prioritise state counselling due to inadequate ranks for the All India Counselling, and expensive fees in private medical colleges. However, the delay in counselling left them nowhere to go.
“There are also a lot of repeaters appearing for NEET-PG 2024, along with the current batch of students. With the seat fees at A-Category private medical colleges rising over Rs 50 Lakhs, state quota seats are our safest bet. These incessant delays in the counselling left aspirants, particularly those who have given repeated attempts, in a lurch,” says Jyoti*, another aspirant.
NEET-PG 2024 marked the second attempt for Jyoti*, an MBBS graduate from the 2016 batch.
A year of confusion and anguish
With trouble following NEET-PG 2024 throught last year, aspirants claim that the feeling of anguish and confusion they have gone through throughout 2024 was nothing sort of “mental torture”.
“The exam was postponed four times — with the latest postponement happening hours before the exam. We went to sleep on the night before the exam, ready to give our best the next day — only to wake up to the news of the exam’s postponement,” Sai* recalls.
NEET-PG 2024 was initially announced to be held on March 3, and then it was rescheduled to July 7 in January 2024. However, the NBEMS announced that the exam would be advanced to June 23, which was then postponed to August 11 amidst protest against an alleged paper leak in the NEET-UG 2024 exam.
The woes of the aspirants did not end there. They were also forced to deal with a two-shift exam — something that was unheard of in the history of medical examinations, an allegedly opaque normalisation formula and calculation method, and a Supreme Court hearing on these issues that has not yet arrived at a verdict.
“When even the Supreme Court is not yet able to provide us with any relief, why was the examination made more complicated to begin with? It is impossible to normalise the scores of two exams with different standards in a fair manner,” Jyoti* laments.
Further, with students in Telangana rushing towards the state quota seats, she adds that the competition in the State Counselling rounds would also be immense.
“I would not be able to get the seat in the college and department of my choice at this point, despite getting a decent rank this year,” she says, adding that the two years she spent in preparation for the exam have not paid off.
However, aspirants are still hopeful that the state counselling process in Telangana would go smoothly, as they believe that there was nothing to go wrong anymore.
*names changed to maintain anonymity
