Nearly 13.3 lakh students will write the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test on Sunday for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges. The three-hour test, conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education, starts at 10 am.
The exam will take place at 2,255 centres in 136 cities across the country. The results will be declared by June 5, according to the CBSE’s website.
Students write the test to get seats in MBBS and BDS courses in colleges approved by the Medical Council of India or Dental Council of India.
Before the exam, the Supreme Court’s stay on the Madras High Court’s directive to the CBSE to set up additional exam centres in Tamil Nadu had caused outrage in the state. Around 5,000 students from Tamil Nadu had been allocated centres in Kerala, Karnataka and Rajasthan, The New Indian Express reported.
On Saturday, the Union Human Resource Development Ministry clarified that the students had been given centres outside the state because there was a “remarkable rise” in the number of candidates in Tamil Nadu.
“Tamil Nadu has registered a 31% increase in candidates for NEET 2018 over that of 2017,” the ministry said, according to The New Indian Express. “The CBSE, which conducts the test, has therefore increased exam centres from 149 in 2017, to 170 this year in light of this surge.”
The state government has criticised the CBSE over the matter, and said it would provide financial assistance to students travelling to neighbouring states, ANI reported. “It’s all the fault and shortcoming of the CBSE,” minister D Jayakumar said. “They did not inform Tamil Nadu government of their requirement of exam centres in proper time for us to make the arrangements.”
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