NEW DELHI: National Entrance cum Eligibility Test (NEET), the entrance test for admission into medical colleges, will be organised by the newly formed National Testing Agency in only offline mode and on a single date, the Union Human Resources Development Ministry clarified on Tuesday.
The examination will be held on May 5. The clarification comes as the Ministry had first announced that NTA will organise NEET on multiple dates and only in online mode from next year-a move that was resisted by Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. In July, in a press conference, while releasing a tentative schedule of examinations to be organised by the NTA, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar had said that India's two most popular examinations JEE (Main) and NEET will be held twice a year each and over multiple days.
He had also said that both the examinations will only be in online mode. The move, however, did not go down well with the Health Ministry as it's struggling to ensure the stability of NEET-a single examination for admission into MBBS and BDS courses offered by public and private institutions across the country.
"As many states are still not comfortable with NEET and students have many issues with syllabus, it will be an added issue if the examination is held only in online mode-which many might not be comfortable with," said a senior health ministry official in the medical education division.
"Also if the examination is held twice, the issue of different question papers with varied difficulty level will arise. That's why we had requested the HRD minister not to tinker significantly the way CBSE had been conducting the test," the official said. The HRD Ministry, in a statement, said, that all the other examinations conducted by the NTA, including National Eligibility Test and JEE (Main) will only be computer based.
JEE (Main) will be held twice a year in 2019 between 6-20 January and 6-20 April and students will have the option to choose the date as per their convenience. They can also appear in examination in either or both times and in the case of later, the better score will be considered.