With the daunting prospect of taking the medical entrance exam — National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) — amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Vignesh* registered his name with the Indian Embassy in Oman in April. Four months later, Vignesh and his parents have become more anxious than ever. As the Supreme Court recently refused to allow Indian students to take NEET 2020 abroad, they must travel to India to write the entrance test — amid restricted flight services, rising COVID-19 cases, changing quarantine rules in different states and the inevitable stress.
National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET-UG 2020, which is required for admission to MBBS courses, is scheduled to be held across India on September 13. For many NEET aspirants in the Gulf nations, travelling to India now will be cutting it close. Vignesh and his father Murthy*, for example, managed to get two seats on the Air India flight under the Vande Bharat Mission to fly to Tamil Nadu on September 9. This leaves them with three days, which will not be sufficient to complete their quarantine, be it for a seven-day or 14-day period, unless the state government completely exempts quarantine for such candidates.
Apart from the fear of contracting the disease during the flight journey or on reaching India, the changing quarantine guidelines for international passengers, too, has caused confusion among the NEET aspirants in the Gulf. The quarantine rules are fixed by state governments depending on its number of active COVID-19 cases. Some states insist on 14-day quarantine (at an institutional facility or at home), while some grant exemptions on submitting a COVID-19 test reporting showing they are negative for coronavirus. However, they would still be required to undergo quarantine for at least seven days, unless it is for a short trip (two to four days), provided they produce the return ticket.
While Murthy and Vignesh have decided to take the RT-PCR test before embarking on their journey, “I don’t know what will happen after reaching India. We are taking a chance and travelling,” said the father.
Vignesh will be taking NEET at the exam centre in Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu. “With no sign of hope from the Indian Embassy, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Chief Minister’s Office and the SC, we decided to travel to India. However, it took me four days to finally book two tickets for a direct flight to Trichy,” Murthy told TNM.
“I stood at the Air India office in Muscat for four days, and each time they said their system was done. We wanted to travel directly to the Trichy airport than Chennai airport to spare ourselves the hassle of crossing three to four districts and then losing more time,” said Murthy, who is also worried about his return flight as India has not resumed its flight services.
While the exam centres for the common engineering entrance exam, Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) – Main, has been set up in many countries abroad, it is bad news for medical aspirants. This is primarily because the NEET exam continues to be in the pen-paper format, while JEE and other competitive exams are computer-based. NEET has been postponed twice since the pandemic began.
Scores of petitioners, including parents of NEET candidates from Middle East countries like Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, approached the Kerala High Court, Supreme Court and even wrote to the Indian Embassies, Ministry of Education and Medical Council of India, requesting them to allow the exam to be held at various centres in the Gulf.
“We never got a humanitarian solution,” Nasser Abdul Kareem, a resident of Qatar, summed up the outcome of the months-long struggle of a group of non-resident Indian (NRI) parents and students to allow NEET to be conducted in Gulf countries. Nasser is part of one of the first groups that approached Kerala High Court with the petition.
“We even gave them solutions. All school principals and management in Qatar and other Gulf nations agreed to allow students to take the exams in their premises, even if a single student were to sit in one classroom. Apart from the school faculty, there could have been supervision from the Embassy, for three to four hours,” Nasser told TNM. He is among the parents across Gulf nations who had to frantically send their children to India to take the exam and hopefully complete the quarantine.
On August 24, the Supreme Court declined these batches of petitions and said students could take the Vande Bharat Mission flights to appear for the exam. It also made the 14-day quarantine compulsory, although they could approach the respective state governments to seek relaxation.
However, several NEET aspirants are just not ready to take that risk and have chosen not to take the entrance exam this year due to lack of time, clarity over the protocols and safety concerns.
"I think I will take the exam next year now. I know a year is precious but it is just not feasible to travel to India for the exam now,” a candidate based in Oman told PTI on the condition of anonymity. “I was really hoping that they either postpone the exam or set up centres in Gulf countries too," she said.
According to Asanu Ameen, Center Head of Unique World Education (an engineering and medical entrance coaching institute in the UAE), more than 100 students were taking coaching to take the NEET 2020 exam. “Of this, 30% of the students have decided not to take the exam this year after the Supreme Court order,” said Asanu.
“Apart from the flights under the Vande Bharat Mission, many cultural organisations are arranging flights for interested candidates. But many are still worried about contracting the disease and about the COVID-19 situation in India,” he added.
Sreedevi* from Qatar had been preparing for NEET for the last two years and had even completed a crash course when the Supreme Court verdict came as a disappointment to her. “Parents don’t want to send their children alone because it is risky. Besides, there is no clarity or guarantee if the accompanying parent could come back to Doha within a specific period of time, complete the quarantine in India and Qatar, and then join work on time,” she said, explaining why she decided to take NEET next year.
“Of course, one year will be wasted. But, I will attend classes once again, although studying alone will not help,” she told TNM, adding, “I am upset but I have mentally prepared myself.”
Incidentally, many candidates taking the NEET exam have already been admitted to medical universities in foreign countries. For them, deferring the exam is not an option, because according to the Medical Council of India (MCI), NEET-UG is mandatory for Indian candidates seeking admissions for medical courses in foreign universities or institutes.
“My son Vignesh got admission to a university in Malaysia. His virtual classes start on September 14, a day after the NEET exam,” said Murthy.
“Vignesh is stressed. We are going through this hassle only because of this rule. If it were normal circumstances, we would have flown down, taken the exam and left. Despite several requests, we were not exempted. Since he has already received the admission, taking the exam in 2021 would cause unnecessary delay.”
According to the National Testing Agency (NTA), the agency conducting competitive entrance exams in India, among nearly 16 lakh candidates who have registered for NEET, over 12.75 lakh have downloaded their admit cards. "NTA considers this as an achievement, but many students like my son were forced to download it," said Murthy.
(*Names changed on request)