NEET PG Aspirants Express Frustration Over NMC's Decision To Prepone Exam Dates

The National Medical Commission’s (NMC) decision to prepone NEET PG exams is met with dissatisfaction from the aspirants planning to take the exam this year. As per the latest schedule released by NMC, the date of the exam, which was earlier scheduled for July 7, has now been preponed to June 23, 2024. The exam was earlier supposed to be held on Mar 3. The date was postponed because of the clash with the general elections slated to be held from April 19, 2024 to June 1, 2024.

Doctors from all over the country appearing for the exam this year took to social media to express their annoyance and demanded clarifications from the National Testing Agency (NTA). Many claim that the repeated change of dates is taking away their focus from their studies and is simply unwanted. 

Dr Vasundhara Kumar, an intern at a hospital in the Dadar area of Mumbai, said, “NMC has made a joke out of NEET exams. It is already difficult for me to manage my clinic as well as study for the exams and now with the date of the exam getting changed, it has become more difficult.”

Another aspirant, Dr Pradip Shyam Mukherjee from Kanpur expressed that preponing the exams will affect the students more than postponing it. “The NMC is asking students to hastily prepare for the exams instead of understanding the importance of the exam. The exam is already difficult to crack and now this preponement has only added to our woes,” he said. Mukherjee is an intern at Indira Gandhi Government Medical College, Nagpur.

The aspirants are also worried about the counselling process, scheduled to start on Aug 5, since the internship eligibility date is Aug 15. Speaking on the issue, Dr Grace Paul from Jaipur said, “How will we produce the internship certificate on Aug 5 when the internship itself will be completed on Aug 15? All this is very unnecessary and almost like they don’t care about the students.” Paul is a student at Jaipur National University. 

“Two weeks is a long time for an aspirant. We were all studying keeping in mind the July 7 date but now due to the date change, all our revision time has been compromised,” said Dr Divyanaka Jha, an intern at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) from Ranchi. She also added that instead of preponing the exam, the NMC could have simply postponed the exam. 

All India Students’ Dental Association also expressed their views on the preponement of the date and wrote on X, " #NMC initially scheduled the #NEETPG2024 exam in July to accommodate more students, a decision we endorsed. This brought relief to students. However, the sudden rescheduling to June caused distress among students leaving us puzzled about reasons behind these frequent changes.”

In a meeting with the Medical Counselling Committee, the Post Graduate Medical Education Board (PGMEB), the Directorate General for Health Sciences, the National Board of Examinations for Medical Sciences, and the NMC, the decision was made to change the examination date. The results of the postgraduate admission exam will be announced on July 15, per the updated schedule. Counselling will start on Aug 5 and end on Oct 15, 2024.

The Free Press Journal (FPJ) reached out to NMC but the body is yet to issue a statement on the matter.