Chennai: Several medical and IIT aspirants from Tamil Nadu are asking for the cancellation or postponement of JEE, NEET entrance exams, till the country comes out of the COVID situation.
B Krithika, whose father works as a driver and her mother a domestic help, aspires to be a doctor but isn’t sure how she would appear for the common entrance test, NEET, scheduled on September 13 as there is no public transport in Tamil Nadu yet.
Several among lakhs of applicants from Tamil Nadu have the same problem as Krithika as only 14 of the 33 districts of the state have NEET centres. “How do we go to the exam centre? Even autos won’t be available on a total-lockdown day,” Krithika was quoted as saying by NDTV.
Besides the transport issue, Krithika pointed out a bigger problem. “What if girls contract the virus when they share toilets?”
Another aspirant Deepshitha, also from Chennai, is particularly worried as she has to travel to neighbouring Kancheepuram district — another COVID-19 hotspot — for an exam. She has registered for both JEE and NEET.
“If we are alive only then we can we go to medical college after taking NEET, right? We don’t know the extent to which social distancing would be maintained; even parents will accompany students. Our lives are more important,” Deepshitha, daughter of an IT professional, said.
Meanwhile, DMK supremo MK Stalin has also demanded postponement of the JEE and NEET exams.