Tomorrow’s doctors see hope as NEET PG counselling begins today after inordinate delays

After having their fate hang in limbo for months, NEET PG students are finally breathing a sigh of relief. The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Post-Graduate (NEET PG) 2022 counselling is finally set to begin today, September 15, and will end on November 14, 2022. Covid-19 has played a spiral effect in not only delaying exams but also results and counselling schedules for the most important exams in India.

According to Dr. Rafia Khan, Chief Advisor of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), the delay was also because there were new seats allotted to medical colleges, but the seats were not mapped out. Dr Khan further added thatproper communication from the authorities to the students helps calm some of the stress of waiting for crucial announcements.

A point agreed to by some of the NEET PG aspirants that FPJ spoke to. All affirmed that timely announcements on the counselling would have really helped because initially, the counselling was to begin in July and go up to September, but the dates swung back and forth. Finally, it was earlier this month that September 15 was announced as the official date.

Meet Ghoina, a NEET PG aspirant from gujarat told FPJ that "immediately after our results were out on June 1, I was offered a Class 2 job with the Gujarat government. Since the result came out too quickly, I didn't take up the job thinking that counselling would begin very soon too. However, it ended up getting delayed and I ended up wasting a few months."

Another aspirant Rajnish Raj said, "There were rumours making the rounds of counselling dates. July, August, September - not being able to know what is correct led to confusion because bagging seats is also on our mind."