New Delhi: Starting with the postponement of Class 10 and Class 12 board exams in March, to engineering, medical and hospitality entrance exams, academic activity across the country have continued to remain disrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The government has announced revised schedules for the CBSE board exams, which are going to take place from 1-15 July, the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering (18 July) and the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admission into medical colleges (26 July), but the timetable for most others are yet to be decided.
There has also been opposition from parents as well as students against the holding of CBSE, NEET and JEE in July since the pandemic has shown no signs of abetting.
A petition was filed in the Supreme Court earlier this month requesting the government to cancel the pending Class 12 exams. The court had Wednesday asked CBSE to consider the request.
A number of students have also written to HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on social media and filed petitions to cancel the exams. One such petition was started by a group called ‘Youth of India’ on change.org two weeks ago, asking the government to cancel exams in July. The petition had gathered more than two lakh signatures till Thursday (18 June).
One of the country’s biggest entrance exams after NEET and JEE is the National Eligibility Test (NET), which is usually conducted in the month of June. Thousands of aspirants taking interest in research and teaching sit for NET. There has, however, been no notification so far from the National Testing Agency (NTA), the nodal agency for entrance exams, on the NET exam dates this year.
Other important exams for which dates are yet to be announced are entrance exams for hotel management and agriculture programmes.
Here is a list of exams that were postponed because of Covid-19 and their new dates:
Also read: Online exams if possible or pen-and-paper exams after lockdown, V-C headed panels tell UGC