NEET 2020: NTA to Double Test Centres to Maintain Social Distancing

NTA is planning to double-up the NEET exam centres to maintain the rules of social distancing during the exam.

After the announcement of NEET 2020 exam date by HRD Minister, Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, NTA faces one of the biggest challenges to conduct the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2020 examination for around 15 lakh candidates across the country. Following the announcement and guidelines by the central government of India, the National Testing Agency, the exam conducting body of NEET is planning to double the number of test centres to maintain social distancing during the exam.

Following central government directions, the NTA is planning to seat two students with a minimum distance of 2 metres between them. More than this, the examination authority has double-up the exam centres to follow the social distancing guidelines owing to the coronavirus outbreak. There will be around 6000 exam centres assigned, as opposed to the originally planned 3,000 test centres, to accommodate 15 lakh NEET aspirants.

What Do NTA Officials Say?

In a recent interview, the senior NTA officer says “What makes conducting NEET amid the COVID-19 outbreak more challenging than other entrance exams is that it is an offline pen-and-paper test, which means that I have only one question paper and I have to conduct it in a single shift in one day all over the country. Hence, I need to double the number of exam centres to accomplish the exam and follow all the social distancing norms”.

What Are The Important Dates?

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test 2020 is all set to be held on 26^th July 2020 at the several test centres across the country. NEET is an offline (pen-paper) based exam, that has to be conducted only at the examination venue, unlike JEE Main and JEE Advanced, which are CBT based exams and can be conducted in multiple shifts.  The decision to double-up exam venues will help students to appear for NEET 2020 without thinking about COVID-19 infection. Till last year, two students were usually seated at a distance of one metre between them.

NEET 2020: Add-on Exam Centre Details

Every year, NEET is performing with the sole criteria for admission to all undergraduate medical programmes in the country. However, this time due to the coronavirus epidemic, the complete education system is suffering a huge loss. To balance the loss, NTA has decided to convert Kendriya Vidyalayas, CBSE-affiliated schools, engineering colleges and state government colleges as the additional NEET test centres.