Six states in India filed a review petition in the Supreme Court on Friday against the court’s August 17 order refusing to postpone the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE Mains) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) being held across the country next month amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The review plea has been filed by ministers from West Bengal (Moloy Ghatak), Jharkhand (Rameshwar Oraon), Rajasthan (Raghu Sharma), Chhattisgarh (Amarjeet Bhagat), Punjab (B S Sidhu) and Maharashtra (Uday Ravindra Sawant).
The states have said that they have filed a review petition since the Supreme Court’s order on August 17 fails to secure the safety, security and right to life of the candidates, that it has ignored the teething logistical difficulties, failed to balance the competing but equally important aspects of conducting examinations on the proposed dates, fails to ensure mandatory safeguards are put in place for the examinations.
The plea has been filed through advocate Sunil Fernandes.
Earlier, at the virtual meeting held by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Chief Ministers of seven states had expressed their willingness to move the Supreme Court to challenge the Centre's decision to hold the exams despite the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
Amid opposition and demands from students that the exams be postponed, Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' said on Thursday that over 17 lakh candidates have already downloaded their admit cards for JEE and NEET, and this shows that the students want the exams to be conducted at any cost.
While the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) is scheduled to be held on September 13, engineering entrance exam JEE-Main has been planned from September 1 to 6. Around 8.58 lakh candidates have registered for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main and 15.97 lakh students have registered for NEET, according to PTI.
These exams have already been deferred twice in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The JEE-Mains was originally scheduled to be held from April 7-11, but postponed to July 18-23, NEET-UG was originally scheduled for May 3, then pushed to July 26. They were postponed again and are now scheduled to be held in September.
On August 17, the top court had refused to interfere with the conduct of medical and engineering entrance exams — NEET and JEE — scheduled to take place in September, saying that life must go on and students can't lose a precious year due to the pandemic.
The apex court had dismissed a plea by one Sayantan Biswas seeking direction to National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts both the NEET and JEE exams, to postpone them and said that there was absolutely" no merit in the plea.
With PTI inputs