Indian Medical Association urges health minister to reschedule NEET PG 2022

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Wednesday requested Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya to reschedule the NEET PG exam scheduled for May 21.

Highlighting the delay in All India Quota (AIQ) counselling for NEET PG 2021, the association said that the difference between the NEET PG 2022 exam date and the completion of 2021 counselling is too short for an aspirant to prepare and appear for such an “extremely difficult exam”.

The NEET-PG 2021 was held five months after the scheduled date due to Covid-19 and the counselling, which was scheduled to begin on October 25, 2021, started in January due to a pending decision on seat reservations. It was further delayed owing to the Supreme Court’s ruling on March 31, 2022, which ordered the cancellation and conduction of a special round of counselling for the Mop-up round.

“Another innocent five to ten thousand interns, who served as COVID warriors during COVID-19 pandemic, are ineligible to appear for NEET-PG due to delay in completion of their final examination and consequently their internship beyond eligibility criteria set for the examination,” the IMA wrote.

Citing scenarios and Supreme Court judgments on the timetable for postgraduate courses, the IMA stressed the need to defer NEET 2022 examinations as it “concerns career paths of lakhs of medical graduates”.

“Since the NEET PG 2022 examination date is 21st May 2022, we request your timely intervention and urgent consideration of postponement of the NEET PG 2022 for a reasonable period of time, so that, the current NEET PG 2021 aspirants have adequate time to prepare and appear for the upcoming NEET-PG 2022 examination and the eligibility of all interns is also ensured,” the IMA said.

“We are sure that the issue shall be dealt with urgency by granting the prayer as made herein above in larger academic and societal interest as a whole,” it added.