New Delhi/Chennai: Senior officials of the Education and Health Ministries will meet officials of the National Testing Agency (NTA) on Monday to take a call on modalities of holding NEET-UG more than once in a year.
This year the JEE Main aspirants are getting four attempts. The government decided to hold the computer-based JEE Main twice in 2019 and expanded it to four times a year from 2021.
The medical entrance test, however, remains a pen-and-paper mode exam and just once in a year. Approximately 16 lakh students registered for NEET-UG 2020, of which over 13.5 lakh candidates appeared for the test.
President of the Faculty Association of AIIMS, Dr Rakesh Yadav and Chancellor of Sri DevCaraj Urs University in Kolar, Dr S Kumar feel “one bad day should not result in wasting an academic year”.
“A student may not be able to appear due to various reasons or may have a bad day. Therefore, like the engineering entrance, NEET too can be conducted multiple times,” Yadav was quoted as saying by The Times of India.
According to government sources, the meeting would deliberate on two key points on the agenda — whether the entrance test should shift from pen-paper mode to computer-based and conducted twice annually.
“World over, reliance on online exams due to its reliability and security is well established. So it is time for NEET to give up the pen-paper model as majority of pilferage happens during transfer of material to various examination centres,” Kumar said.
“If NTA can manage the logistics, NEET as a computer-based exam is a good idea,” Yadav said.
