NEET-2018- Many Miss the Bus, some barely catch it

NEET 2018 had its fair share of oddities leading to students missing the NEET bus this year or facing the tensions of delay due to wrong set of NEET exam papers being distributed.

Young Akhiya missed the NEET bus this year cause the ill fated train that she boarded from Mallapuram,Kerala for the NEET centre at Chennai at 5pm on Saturday could not reach Chennai at its scheduled time at 4.30am as there was some construction on on the tracks that caused the delay. The system closed at 9.30, leaving Akhiya no option but to now wait to appear for it next year. The authorities raised helpless hands up in the air

Mumbai witnessed a reasonably peaceful writing of the NEET exam by students except at a centre at Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, where 3 students lost a chance to write the NEET exam due to late coming. A student from Colaba who met with an accident faced the same fate when she reached the Powai exam centre at 9.32am only to find the gates closed at 9.30. Many at the cities centres complained of a lengthy attendance process that resulted in wastage of time during the giving of the exam. At a centre, the video recording of candidates and thumb impression and signatures were taken during the exam, making it difficult for the candidates to concentrate for 10-15 minutes.

An official statement by CBSE said candidates were informed about the timings and other rules every day through text messages. “Nearly 1.3 crore SMSes were sent to candidates. A radio programme was also organised to remind them about the last-minute preparations and the timings,” the statement clarified.

Meanwhile in Tamil Nadu- the state that made the maximum noise about wanting to keep away from having its students sit for the precious NEET assessment for admission to medical colleges of the state , witnessed one of the most chaotic situations during its conduction for the year 2018. The chaos occurred when nearly 200 Tamil medium NEET aspirants were given question papers in Hindi at Noyes Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Narimedu, Madurai, and the Sri Vidya Mandir School in Meyyanur, Salem, on Sunday. Only after a delay of three hours were the students provided a Tamil set of questionnaires.

The supervisors who disturbed them were told by the students that their medium instruction was Tamil and hence they could answer in Tamil alone. The supervisors informed the CBSE/ NEET co-ordinators, however the Tamil versions took 3 hrs coming. The saving grace of the situation was that the other 3 rooms at the centre had the right versions of the NEET question paper in English and Tamil respectively.

The affected however were provided lunch and refreshments, said a CBSE official and revealed that an extra 3 hours were also given to these students who sat down to the paper 3 hrs after every body else.

NEET (Madurai) city coordinator P. Selvaraj informed the Hindu, “We got in touch with the CBSE authorities, and as per their directions, photocopies of question papers were made and distributed to the students. The CBSE authorities have assured [us] that all the answer scripts will be evaluated without any issues.”

An Aspirant with alleged fake hall ticket entry at the centre at Salem was not allowed to write the exam. as her name did not appear in the candidate list. However no FIR was registered