Congress to hold pan India protest on Friday against Centre's move to conduct JEE-NEET amid Covid-19

"In line with concerted opposition to this mindless and dictatorial move of the central government, Congress will be holding protests on Friday at 11 am in front of central government offices at state and district headquarters. They will oppose the decision of the government to hold these exams during the pandemic," Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said in a statement.

"While holding exams during Covid crisis has put students in a state of extreme mental stress, the grim flood situation in states like Assam and Bihar will further put students from those states at a severe disadvantage," Venugopal said.

This comes amid demands from several states (mostly non- Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states) to defer holding the Joint Entrance Exam Main (JEE Main) and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mamata requests opposition leaders to move SC demanding JEE, NEET postponement:

Earlier in the day, in a meeting called by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee said, "Students and youth are the future of our country. We the state governments can appeal to the Supreme Court if the Centre does not feel like doing it. My request to all the state governments is to move the Supreme Court seeking a postponement of the examinations until the situation becomes favourable."

"The central government can appeal in the Supreme Court through the Attorney General or Solicitor General. If they don't do it, we can of course move the Supreme Court and also start a public movement like dharna or strike," the CM said.

"Whatever they are saying in the name of cooperative federalism, the state governments are being bulldozed like anything," Banerjee added in an unsparing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre.

Banerjee has already sent two letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to postpone the JEE and NEET, at a time thousands of students from across the country are protesting against the conduct of the two examinations.

Among other CMs, Jharkhand's Hemant Soren, Maharashtra's Uddhav Thackeray, Punjab's Amarinder Singh, Rajasthan's Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh's Bhupesh Baghel and Puducherry's V Narayanasamy were present in the meeting.

 National Testing Agency stand:

In its statement, the  National Testing Agency (NTA) said they are attempting to hold the entrances as scheduled in Septemeber to save one academic year and in students' interest.

"After the release of admit cards, the NTA received representations to postpone these examinations. The agency also received a large number of representations to not postpone these examinations. Both groups of students have given reasons applicable personally to them."

"In this scenario, NTA visualises no reason for not conducting the examinations and in the interest of students and the country, it has decided to conduct entrance examinations in September," the NTA said in a statement.

"The country is about to enter into the fourth phase of un-lockdown (Unlock 4) from September 1, 2020, and many of the activities have opened up. The academic calendar of the current year 2020-21 has also been affected adversely, as in the absence of the entrance examinations, the admissions in the first semester of engineering and medicine undergraduate courses could not happen so far. This has impacted adversely the academic career of the students," the NTA added.

Disappointing thousands of students across the country, Amit Khare, the secretary of HRD Ministry, last Friday said the entrance examinations cannot be deferred.

Khare cited the Supreme Court order which had given a nod to hold the two examinations.

Several pleas were filed in the Supreme Court seeking a postponement of the entrance examinations.

The top court has, however, rejected all the petitions stating examinations can't be deferred indefinitely.