West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the second consecutive day on Tuesday on the holding of JEE/NEET examinations during the ongoing pandemic and sought his intervention. Banerjee in her letter also requested the Centre to consider appealing to the Supreme Court to review its decision on holding JEE/NEET examinations in the interest of the student community.
She wrote to Modi after the state government received a letter from the National Testing Agency on Tuesday to conduct the JEE/NEET examinations starting from September 1,2020. "I am aware that the Hon'ble Supreme Court has given a verdict on holding JEE/NEET examinations and the central government has been issuing instructions to go ahead with it accordingly. However, I would like to request for your kind intervention and to consider the Central government making an appeal to the Hon'ble Apex Court to review its decision in the interest of the student community, so that they are free from mental agony and mental disaster.
"Such intervention is very much essential in the larger interest of the students to facilitate creating a situation whereby the students will neither be subjected to grave health risk nor they will be facing a career risk,"Banerjee wrote to the PM. "Today our government has received a letter from the National Testing Agency to conduct the JEE/NEET examinations starting from September 1, 2020. We are really worried and concerned," she wrote.
Banerjee had on Monday written to the prime minister appealing for the postponement of the JEE and NEET exams due to the prevailing COVID-19 situation. She had said that lives of students should not be put at risk by taking such "unilateral and bureaucratic decisions".
In her letter on Tuesday, she said "I would request you to kindly appreciate the sensitivity of the matter and consider taking necessary action for posting these examinations until the public health situation becomes conducive again. Indeed, I have been consistently arguing that the current pandemic situation is an unprecedented crisis in the country and we should not put any life in jeopardy during this pandemic period by taking such decisions." She reminded the prime minister about her request on postponing the NEET and JEE examinations in September consider in health risks of students. "I had requested to kindly postpone the NEET and JEE examinations in September 2020. I have explained in the letter that the examinations will pose grave health risks to the examinees. I had reminded you, that earlier, I had also requested you in my letter dated 11th July 2020 to postpone all terminal examinations in universities/ colleges across the country and to follow the first guidelines issued by UGC in this regard," Banerjee's letter read.
Aspirants sit for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to premier engineering colleges and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for undergraduate medical courses. The JEE (Main) this year is scheduled to be held between September 1 and 6, while the JEE (Advanced) on September 27.
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