Every year, around 20,000 to 24,000 students appear for the NEET-PG exam from Kerala. There are 13 centres in the state for the exam, and many students even travel to Tamil Nadu to appear for the exam.
However, this year, several students from Kerala have been allotted exam centres in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – in cities completely new to them – peaking their anxiety levels and leaving them in distress. The students, who now have to travel a thousand kilometres, are stressed about arranging lodging and accommodation in haste to make it for the exam on August 3.
The students in distress have formed WhatsApp groups and made representation to the National Board of Examinations for Medical Sciences (NBEMS) through Members of Parliament (MPs) and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) – reported The Hindu.
The Indian Medical Association Junior Doctors’ Network (IMA JDN) has taken up the issue and written to Union Health Minister JP Nadda, highlighting the concerns of students, particularly those from economically weaker sections.
The IMA JDN also highlighted the unfairness, noting that while some students are fortunate enough to appear for the exam without having to travel far, others are forced to spend time and money travelling to distant exam centres to take the same exam. This takes a huge toll on the mental well-being of the students.
Originally scheduled for June 15, NBE had planned to hold the exam in two shifts, with two different sets of question papers. This move was met with resistance and challenged in the Supreme Court, pointing the unfairness and arbitrariness of the move. Following this, NBE was pushed to conduct the exam in a single shift, with August 3 as the fresh date.
According to a report by The Hindu, Anjali Ravindran, a NEET PG aspirant and a student of Sree Gokulam Medical College in Thiruvananthapuram, said, “When this happened, we had to go into the NBE’s portal and give our option for the exam centre again. We get to give only one option for the exam centre, which is supposed to be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Three of us who gave Palakkad as our option were allotted Sathupally in Telengana."
She went on to add, "A couple of my friends were lucky to have got Ernakulam, though they had opted for Thrissur. We later found that hundreds of us have been allotted exam centres in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Sathupally, we now know is over 1,300 km away from Thiruvananthapuram and even by flight or by train, connectivity issues are huge”.
“If not the exam centre we opted for, any centre within our home state would have been manageable. This is an exam with such high stakes, and instead of giving it all our focus, we are now stressing over our travel options, lodging arrangements and the money we will end up spending. There are also some NEET-PG aspirants, who are young mothers with babies, and their plight is even more difficult,” she added.
The IMA JDN, in their appeal to Minister Nadda, requested that the NBEMS be directed to reopen the exam centre portal for the affected candidates to re-select the centres within their home state or in a city in proximity. It stated that these logistical issues have a major impact on the students’ performance in such a significant exam, which is held only once a year.
“The NBEMS has been conducting this exam for years, and they should have a clear idea of approximately how many students should be expected to write the exam from each State. They should plan ahead so that there are adequate exam centres in every State for the students,” said Sreejith N Kumar, Chairman, IMA-JDN Standing Committee.
