NEET-PG 2025 to be held 3 in a single shift on August, Supreme Court told
NEW DELHI: The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Postgraduate 2025 (NEET-PG 2025), which will be previously scheduled to be held in two shifts on June 15, will now be conducted in a single shift on August 3, the National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) told in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The board's decision comes days after a bench headed by justice Vikram Nath on May 30 set aside its decision to hold the examination in two shifts, ruling that the two-shift model was 'arbitrary' since any two question papers could never be said to be have an 'identical level of difficulty or ease'. The bench gave NBEMS two weeks to identify more centres for this purpose.
The board, which sought the top court's approval to the new date, said in its application that August 3 was the earliest possible date given by its technology partner i.e., M/s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS).
The company has suggested the examination could be held in a single shift from 9 am to 12.30 pm on August 3.
When the plan was to conduct the exam in two shifts, NBEMS said the test was to be conducted at 448 centres across 195 cities.
NBEMS said the examination for 2,42,679 candidates would now be conducted at more than 1,000 centres across over 250 cities, and would require over 60,000 people to handle jobs ranging from the commanding officers, system operators, network administrators to invigilators, security staff, registration managers, CCTV staff, electricians.
In addition, TCS has indicated that it would need to arrange and configure over 2,000 local exam servers across the country.
'The respondent (NBEMS) is fully committed to holding the NEET-PG 2025 in a single shift...and this application is being made only to ensure practical feasibility and safety of the said examination along with the coordination with all the relevant authorities and stakeholders,' NBEMS said.
The top court's decision against the two-shift format came on a petition by candidates who reasoned that the questions in the evening shift last year were relatively easier than the first shift. The petitioners, which included individual candidates and the United Doctors Front, questioned why no effort wsas made to identify options to hold the examination in a single shift.
NBEMS had initially claimed that it opted for the two-shift system to rule out the possibility of malpractices by unscrupulous elements since the online examination required secured centres.
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