The National Board of Examinations (NBE) on Friday announced the date for NEET-PG exam, which is held for admission to postgraduate medical courses. The agency has set August 11 as the date of examination. It will be held in two shifts, a release from the agency said. Scheduled for June 22, the NEET-PG exam was postponed hours before its start amid a row over alleged irregularities, including leaked papers, for the UG exam.
The cut-off date for purpose of eligibility to appear in the NEET-PG 2024 exam held for admission to postgraduate medical programmes in government or private medical colleges remains August 15, 2024.
After the cancellation of the exam, NBE president Dr Abhijat Seth had said that the decision was taken as the Ministry of Education wanted to check the robustness of the exam process and get the assurance that there is no vulnerability in this process.
The NBE has been conducting NEET-PG for the past seven years and there have not been any report of a paper leak owing to the board's stringent SOPs, he had said.
The announcement of new date comes days after Union Home Ministry officials met the government's anti-cybercrime body in the wake of exam irregularities.
The government had said that it would carry out a thorough assessment of the robustness of the process of NEET-PG. Among the measures suggested at the meeting were preparing the question paper two hours before the exam.
NEET-PG is held to assess the eligibility of MBBS degree holders for enrolment in postgraduate medical courses in government and private medical colleges nationwide.
Thousands of students launched protest across the country amid a massive row over the NEET-UG paper leak and the cancellation of the UGC-NET.
On Thursday, 50 successful Gujarat-based NEET-UG candidates moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to restrain the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) from cancelling the controversy-ridden exam.
The plea was filed days before a bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud is scheduled to hear as many as 26 petitions seeking reliefs like re-test and probe into the conduct of the examination plagued by allegations of malpractices.
A total of 67 students had scored a perfect 720, unprecedented in the NTA's history, with six from a Haryana centre figuring in the list, raising suspicions about irregularities in the examination held on May 5. It has been alleged that grace marks contributed to 67 students sharing the top rank.
The number of candidates sharing the top rank in the NEET-UG came down to 61 from 67 in the revised results announced by the NTA.
