Supreme Court dismisses plea to postpone NEET PG 2024

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea to postpone the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test postgraduate examination (NEET PG 2024) scheduled to be conducted on August 11 [Vishal Soren @ Bishal Soren and ors vs National Board of Examination and ors]..A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that it cannot order postponement of the exam a couple of days before the exam is slated to be held."Now postponing NEET PG ? How can we postpone such an exam. Nowadays people just come asking to postpone the exam," the Court remarked..Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, appearing for the petitioners, said,"Plea seeks rescheduling because there is one exam in morning and one in afternoon and then it will be normalised."The Court noted that there are 2 lakh students slated to appear for the exam and the same cannot be postponed because of the petition filed by 50 candidates."As a matter of principle we will not reschedule. There are 2 lakh students and 4 lakh parents who will weep over the weekend. We cannot put the careers of so many candidates at risk just because of these petitioners. We do not know who is behind these petitions (not your client)," the Court said while dismissing the petition..The plea filed by one Vishal Soren said that candidates were facing difficulties in reaching their exam centres since were allocated centres in cities which are inconvenient for them to reach.The allocation of test cities was made on July 31 and designated centres were to be declared on August 8, which leaves candidates with very less time to travel to the respective centres for the exam on August 11, it was contended.Further, the exam is scheduled to be conducted in two batches and the formula for normalisation is unknown to the candidates thereby causing apprehensions.The petitioner, thus prayed that the exam be stayed till the petition is decided..The petition was filed through advocate Anas Tanwir.