CM’s offer to fight it out for students at a VC hosted by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi
@Hpezia
Mumbai: The issue of postponing NEET (UG) and JEE (MAINS) entrance exams received strong impetus on August 26, with chief ministers of seven states led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi coming out strongly against it.
About 8.5 lakh students and 15.9 lakh have registered for these major entrance exams scheduled in September, which is strongly sought to be postponed in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
In a video conference, seven chief ministers decided to take up the issue with the prime minister Narendra Modi and even decided to fight it out at the Supreme Court if needed. This was probably the strongest display of political strength on a single platform in support of the student’s community on this issue.
The seven chief ministers including West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, Maharashtra’s Uddhav Thackeray, Punjab’s Amarinder Singh, Jharkhand’s Hemant Soren, Rajasthan’s Ashok Gehlot and Chhattisgarh’s Bhupesh Baghel took this stand at a video conference hosted by the Congress chief. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of Delhi and the Naveen Patnaik-led Orissa government to have already demanded postponement of the exams earlier. The Maharashtra government went one step ahead and passed a cabinet resolution to support the cause of students against the NEET/ JEE exams.
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At the video conference, snippets of which were tweeted by Thackeray, the Maharashtra CM reiterated that with the pandemic spreading widely, conditions continued to be unfavourable to conduct exams as in June. He also re-emphasised that the state was open to conducting exams post-pandemic which students could opt for, to improve their scores.
The Maharashtra government also announced the postponement of the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) exams.
Chhatisgarh’s CM Hemant Soren stressed how the movement of students for taking exams could lead to spread of Covid again. The Center has been adamant to conduct exams to avoid loss of students academic year due to the pandemic instead citing downloads of admit cards by 6.49 lakh students of the total 8.58 JEE students as a sign of students support for exams. The National Testing Agency, which conducts the exams has already issued guidelines and increased exams centres from 2546 to 33843 for NEET and 660 from 570 for JEE to spread out the students.
While the CM’s also opposed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on various other issues like the GST and the management of Covid pandemic, clearly the student community seems to have united the opposition’s voice against the Narendra Modi-led government.
