For representation: Students wearing protective masks wait to enter an examination center for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
NEET examinees were ordered to arrive at the test center three hours prior to the start of the test, keeping in mind the safety and health checks.
- News18.com
- Last update: September 14, 2020 2:07 PM IST
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NEET applicant Santosh Kumar Yadav from Darbhanga in Bihar traveled a distance of 700 kilometers in 24 hours to reach Kolkata and take the exam. He swapped two buses to sit the exam he had been preparing for for months. However, according to fate, Yadav missed the test for only 10 minutes.
He was 10 minutes late and was not allowed into the testing center in Salt Lake, the Hindustan Times reported.
“I begged the authorities but they told me I was late. The exam started at 2 pm. I got to the center around 1:40 p.m. The last deadline to enter the center was 1.30 pm, ”Yadav told a local television channel. “I lost a year,” he was quoted as saying.
NEET examinees were ordered to arrive at the test center three hours before the start of the test, keeping in mind health and safety checks amid the Covid-19 crisis.
Yadav said he boarded a bus in Darbhanga at 8 a.m. Saturday to reach Muzaffarpur. From there, he took a bus to Patna. But a traffic jam on the road to Patna caused him a six-hour delay. From Patna, Yadav took a bus to Kolkata at 9pm and arrived at Sealdah station at 1.06pm. He took a taxi to the test center, but missed the test for 10 minutes.
Earlier, a 19-year-old boy, Diganta Mondal, from Gosaba in Sunderbans, pedaled for six hours to reach the test center in the suburbs of the city 75 km away to take the JEE exam. He had to travel two more hours on public transportation to finally reach the test center in Salt Lake Sector V.
The entrance exam in the middle of a terrible pandemic in the country has been a subject of debate. Activists, students, and leaders of various political parties had opposed the exam out of fear for the students’ safety. Flooding and lack of transportation due to lockdown restrictions at various steps added to the woes for the students.
A few days ago, a 19-year-old from Madurai and two other would-be doctors in Tamil Nadu had committed suicide, prompting opposition parties to demand the removal of the National Entry and Eligibility Test (NEET). In
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