Amid ongoing junior doctors’ demand to postpone the NEET-PG 2022 exam, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has also joined in and requested Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya to reschedule the May 21 exam.
IMA has written a letter to the Health Minister seeking to reschedule the exam.
“The NEET-PG 2021 was held five months after the scheduled date in the month of September 2021. Then the counselling scheduled to begin from October 25, 2021, was also initiated (in January 2022) after a delay due to a pending decision on seat reservations and was further delayed owing to the Supreme Court ruling of March 31, 2022, which ordered cancellation and conduct of special round of counselling for the mop-up round”, the IMA said in the letter.
The letter reads further that as a result of the delayed counselling schedule, NEET-PG 2022 was deferred from April 2022 to May 2022, so that the candidates could appear for the final stray vacancy round of NEET-PG 2021 and can still have plenty of time for preparation and reappearance next time, if they failed to secure a seat this year.
Highlighting the delay in All India Quota counselling for the exam, the IMA underlined 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 like it.
“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 said.
“Since the NEET-PG 2022 examination date is May 21, we request your timely intervention and urgent consideration of postponement of it for a reasonable period of time, so that, the current aspirants have adequate time to prepare and appear for the upcoming examination,” the letter read.