Authorise enough exam centres in every state for NEET-PG: Shashi Tharoor

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor urged Union Health Minister J P Nadda on Thursday, 8 August to authorise enough exam centres in every state for the NEET-PG 2024 on August 11 so that students do not have to travel thousands of kilometers and will be able to avoid the hassle of arranging affordable and safe accommodation.

In a letter to Nadda that Tharoor posted on X, the Congress leader also drew the minister's attention to reports that the number of cities in which the tests are to be conducted has been reduced significantly.

He said since the late evening of 4 August, he has been deluged with representations from innumerable NEET-PG aspirants, adding, "I am convinced that there is, indeed, a major problem."

It appears that aspirants are still being constrained to travel faraway distances, in some cases, even spanning thousands of kilometres, Tharoor said.

"The current weather, which has spawned vicious vagaries of nature across India, challenges of ticket availability, shortage of affordable accommodation and concerns of safety place these doctors in an untenable position. If we are to have national exams, we ought to be able to authorise enough centres in every state, especially given the manageable number of aspirants, allowing candidates to take the exam from centres easily accessible from their places of education or residence," he added.

The member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala also said there are serious concerns about the announced two-shift examination, with two different papers in two shifts and the so-called normalisation or standardisation of results.

"The whole idea of a national examination is vitiated unless it is one test on one date everywhere across India. Exacerbating all of this are the reports that the number of cities, where the tests are to be conducted, has been reduced significantly," he said in the letter.

"In light of the foregoing, I will be grateful if your office could look into these issues and resolve them at your earliest convenience. For if the NEET-PG 2024 is allowed to go through as it is, it will severely imperil the future of our doctors," he said.

The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) would be conducting the exam in two shifts across the country for 2,28,542 candidates at 416 examination centres in 170 cities.

The exam will be conducted in two shifts and the scores of the candidates will be normalised.