Maharashtra: NEET PG Aspirants cry foul as Aurangabad not allotted centre for exam

Aurangabad: The deletion of Aurangabad's name from the NEET-PG examination centre list released by the National Board of Examination has led to an unrest of sorts among parents and their aspiring wards. The exam is to be conducted on January 7, 2018. The NBE has released a list of 129 centres excluding Aurangabad. The city had earlier been part of the NBE list every year. The NBE is the competent authority for conducting the exam.

The students at the time of online registration enter the city that they want to take the exam in. The absence of Aurangabad's name has put the city's aspirants in a fix.

Medical Dialogues team had recently reported that registration for the NEET PG 2018 exam had turned out to be a harrowing experience for students due to website glitches and shortage of exam centres.

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A recent report in TOI states Nanded is the only Marathwada city that has been nominated as an exam centre for NEET PG. Candidates have the choice of visiting either Nanded or Nashik for answering the exam. Both these city centres have a train running time of four or 5 hours.

NEET-PG is an eligibility-cum-ranking examination prescribed as the single entrance examination to various MD/MS and postgraduate Diploma Courses. It is a single window entrance examination for PG courses with no other entrance examination, either at state or institution level, shall be valid for entry to these Courses as per the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 with effect from 2017 admission session, reports TOI.

No state government /private medical college/universities shall be conducting any separate entrance exam for admission to their MD/MS/PG Diploma Courses for the academic session 2018-2019, the state authorities have clarified.

Nationalist Congress Party MLC Satish Chavan, who has written to the centre for the examination centre at Aurangabad to be reinstated, said discontinuation of the centre at Aurangabad by the NBE made little sense.

He said candidates and their parents or guardians would be incurring additional expense to reach other cities now, and said that this exercise would make them lose valuable time that could be used for revision and last-minute preparations ahead of examinations

According to him, around 10,000 candidates had sat for NEET-PG from the centre at Aurangabad last year.

As per official schedule, online registration for NEET-PGstarted on October 31 and will continue till November 27. The examination a computer-based test to be held on January 7, will be followed by a declaration of result by January 31.

Competent authorities could not be contacted for their confirmation of the same.

Free helpline numbers for NEET-PG 1800-11-1700 and 1800-11-1800.

The National Board of Examination remained unresponsive to mail queries till Sunday night.