NEET PG 2023: More Than 9500 Candidates Sign Online Petition Praying For Postponement

Now that the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has extended the MBBS training deadline to 11 August, the demands for postponement of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) Examination 2023 are escalating.

A group of aspirants has started an online petition on change.org; it has already gathered more than 9,500 responses in favor of exam postponement.

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Directing to the extended deadline for the MBBS Training, the petition pointed out that the counseling will only happen in August. "According to this, if we give the exam on 5 March and counseling happens in August..then we have to waste our 5 to 6 months idly, that is nearly half a year. Which will cause INJUSTICE to us, and we will lose our valuable time," it added.

"We kindly request that higher officials give us our right by POSTPONING NEET-PG 2023 exam. On behalf of wasting our time waiting for 5-6 months, we want to utilize studying so that by merely postponing exams, counseling can be held within 1 month," the petition further mentioned.

Apart from this, several medical organizations have also supported the aspirants. Recently, the Indian Medical Association wrote to the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya urging him to defer the exam by two to three months.

The NEET-PG aspirants have been demanding exam postponement for quite some time. Previously, NBE had declared that NEET PG 2023 would be held on 5 March 2023, and it had fixed the Internship deadline as 31 March.

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Since thousands of aspirants were ineligible due to the Internship Deadline, NBE provided relief and extended the deadline to 30 June 2023. Even then, several candidates needed help to clear the eligibility criteria for appearing in the PG medical entrance test.

Even after the postponement of the examination, several thousands of aspirants remained ineligible for the exam. In Telangana alone, 3000 students remained ineligible since the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences extended the internship completion date of MBBS students till 11 August. (KMC) Kakatiya Medical College has about 200 interns who are now ineligible for writing the PG medical entrance test.

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Recently, the Indian Medical Association (IMA ) also supported the candidates. Reporting to Union Health Minister, IMA, in its letter dated 6 February 2023, referred to the hardships faced by the candidates due to the local training schedules and mentioned, "While we are entrusted with the task to bring uniformity & standardization in pg exams conducted in India. We must safeguard these basic purposes while framing the schedule for NEET PG."

Opening that well-being and welfare of the students should be the primary and only focus, and IMA added, "As requested by IMA Headquarters, the problem of eligibility criteria for NEET PG 2023 was fixed by extending the completion date of an internship. However, this also needs to synchronize with the actual examination date, which shall be convened after completion of training."

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Seeking an immediate meeting with the Health Minister to safeguard the interests of all medical candidates and medical education in the country, IMA added, "NEET PG-2023 exams date should be postponed by 2-3 months to safeguard the future of aspiring medical candidates."

NBEMS has extended the Training Deadline for NEET PG aspirants until 11 August. Therefore, the students complain that they must stand idle for four to five months since the counseling process can start after September 2023.

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