BENGALURU: The ruling Congress and Opposition BJP continued to trade barbs over reports that students missed Sunday’s NEET-UG retest in Bengaluru, allegedly due to a Congress event at Palace Grounds.
Senior BJP MLA and Assembly Opposition leader R Ashoka said the Congress event caused severe traffic congestion across Bengaluru, and students travelling to NEET centres couldn’t reach the venue on time.
Ashoka said the inconvenience could have been avoided if the Congress programme had been postponed by a few hours.
Congress had organised the event to mark MLC BK Hariprasad taking charge as party’s state unit chief.
Ashoka said PM Narendra Modi has altered the schedules of his programmes keeping students’ welfare in mind. But the Congress government showed little sensitivity towards the concerns of students and their parents, he alleged.
Hitting back, Hariprasad accused BJP of trying to deflect attention from irregularities in NEET, saying the NDA government is “trying to cover up its own mistakes” by passing the buck on the Congress.
“It is true that there was a traffic jam due to the Congress Sankalpa Samavesha programme. We had organised the programme on Sunday so that the public would not be inconvenienced. There were minor problems. We do not deny them. But I saw the news that two or three students did not appear for NEET due to the traffic congestion. We express our regret if such a mistake was caused by our event,” he said.
He claimed that all precautionary measures were taken with clear instructions being given to the police and Seva Dal workers. “NEET started at 1.30pm, and all the buses that were supposed to come to our programme had reached the venue by 10.30am,” he said.
Hariprasad promised to compensate the loss caused to the students who missed the test by helping them to take the next exam. “Our team will try to meet them. We are ready to bear the loss they have suffered,” he clarified.
He took Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya to task for accusing Congress of doing injustice to NEET students. “The BJP MP should say who is responsible for the suicide of these children,” he added. He pointed out that several students, including 1,400 in Mysuru, 286 in Yadgir, and many in some districts, including Dakshina Kannada, were absent.
On Union Minister for Steel and Heavy Industries HD Kumaraswamy’s statement that they should learn from watching Modi wait at the airport, Hariprasad said, “We don’t need to learn from him how many minutes he waited or in which helicopter he took. What Modi needs to answer is that 20 students committed suicide due to NEET question paper leak. I know why Modi stayed at the airport for 45 minutes. There is no answer about NEET, CBSE, UPSC question paper leaks... No action has been taken against the guilty,” he said.
