National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Super Specialty (NEET SS) had quite been on the news recently, from protests by students to being postponed and Supreme Court hearing on the matter. If you don’t know the whole story yet, read on!
National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences, NBEMS has released the NEET SS Exam 2021 date. The NEET SS examination in the old pattern will be conducted on January 10, 2022. The registration process for NEET SS 2021 will reopen on 1ST November and will continue till 22ND November.
According to the previous conduction dates, UPSC NDA/NA II Exam 2021 was clashing with its schedule coupled with the issue on its pattern, so NEET SS was postponed.
According to the official notice, NBEMS also mentioned that candidates who had already registered and paid the examination fee of more than Rs 4,250, if applying for more than one group, shall stand eligible for the refund of the examination fee.
Also, those candidates who do not wish to continue with the application registration due to the changes made for NEET SS 2021 are open to submit a request for a refund of the examination fee to NBEMS.
The main issue to many students, which made it to the Supreme Court was regarding changes to the paper pattern of the exam. A group of 41 doctors, preparing for the NEET SS examination, then scheduled on November 11 had complained that the authorities had arbitrarily changed the earlier pattern of examination (40% questions from general medicine and 60% from the super speciality course applied for) to a new pattern 100% based on general medicine, more than a month after notifying the exam dates.
However, the examination body and the Centre reasoned the change to facilitate the filling of seats at super-speciality courses mainly due to the exam pattern.
A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Vikram Nath and BV Nagarathna strongly condemned the prejudices of students who have been preparing for the exam for years. The bench termed the decision an attempt at filling seats at private colleges. There are a total of 414 medical colleges that offer super-speciality courses of which 118 are government-owned and the rest 296 are private.
It gave directives to the Centre to revert to the old format for this year and implement any change to the exam pattern from 2022-23 only. In response to this, the exam was postponed for 2 months and recently, the new date for 10th January 2022 has been released.
Students are advised to regularly check the official website, nbe.edu.in, for more details on the exam and any new announcements.
