Bihar boy misses NEET by 10 minutes after travelling 700 kms to Kolkata

Santosh Kumar Yadav, a resident of Bihar's Darbhanga, was 10 minutes late in reaching the examination centre in Kolkata's Salt Lake area.

Yadav had boarded a bus at 8 pm on Saturday in Darbhanga to reach Muzaffarpur from where he took another bus to Patna, the capital city of Bihar.

But he was late to reach Patna by six hours due to traffic jam.

Then the student took another bus from Patna at 9 pm on Saturday which dropped him at Kolkata's Sealdah station at 1:06 pm on Sunday. Yadav said he then hurriedly took a cab to the examination centre but he got late by 10 minutes.

"I pleaded with the authorities but they said I was late. The examination started at 2 pm. I reached the centre around 1.40 pm. The last deadline for entering the centre was 1.30 pm," Yadav told a news channel and added, "I lost a year."

Various states ruled by the opposition parties had earlier requested the central government to postpone the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main and NEET considering the grim Covid-19 situation in the country.

Incidentally, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was the first to suggest her counterparts from other states to move the Supreme Court seeking a reconsideration of its own order, which had allowed the holding of the twin examinations.

Citing the top court order, the central government had clearly stated it was in no mood to postpone the examinations.

Earlier, the West Bengal government had called off the anti-Covid-19 lockdown on Saturday for smooth travelling of students across the state on Sept 13.