The Supreme Court stated that the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, NEET 2020, and JEE Main 2020 Exams which are scheduled for the month of September would not be postponed. Students had filed a petition in the court, asking for the exam dates to be postponed again, till normalcy returns. The court, however, dismissed the plea today saying that the exams would be conducted and would not be deferred. 

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing The National Testing Agency(NTA), assured the court that all necessary precautions will be taken in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. The apex court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra ordered for the dismissal of the petition and said “Career of students cannot be put under jeopardy for long.”

The plea had cited that, conducting the JEE Main and NEET examination across the country at such perilous time is nothing else but putting lives of lakhs of young students (including petitioners herein) at utmost risk and danger of disease and death. It also said that the best recourse at this stage can be to wait for some more time, let the COVID-19 crisis subside, and then only conduct these exams, to save the lives of the students and their parents.

The petitioners also urged the Court to increase the number of NEET and JEE examination centers across the country and provide at least one center in one district of each state. Issuing a notice on July 3, the NTA had said the JEE Main will be conducted from September 1 to 6 and NEET UG 2020 will be held on September 13, 2020.

The plea filed by advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava had also said: “While deciding to conduct the aforesaid JEE (Main) April-2020 and NEET UG-2020 exams in September 2020, the respondents (NTA and others) have overlooked that many states have refused to allow conducting of any professional or non-professional exams in their states at this stage and hence the same is likely to cause unimaginable harassment to the petitioners and other similarly situated students.”
Mean-while, India’s COVID-19 death toll breached the 50,000 marks as 941 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday. As many as 57,982 COVID-19 cases were reported in the last 24 hours across the country, taking India’s total coronavirus cases to 26,47,664 cases.