Plea to Roll Back Age Criterion for NEET Filed in Supreme Court

Sabyasachi Rai filed a petition in Supreme Court seeking abolition of age criterion for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test or NEET. The petitioner claimed that he is 27 years old and qualified in NEET last year. However, he was unable to take admission due to financial problems and decided to take admission this year.

However, the sudden announcement made by Union Health Ministry shattered all his dreams. Now, he is ineligible to seek admission through NEET as the upper age limit for NEET is 25 years. Therefore, he filed a petition in Supreme Court seeking justice.

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The petition will be heard on February 17, 2017. According to the changes implemented by Union Health Ministry, medical aspirants will have only three chances to take NEET, and the minimum age to appear for NEET is 17, and upper age limit is 25. The decision of ministry received negative feedback from most of the medical aspirants.

Pallavi Srivastava, who is 30 years old, indicated that she was unable to pursue medical education due to financial problems and now everything was set so that she could pursue medical education this year, but the new guidelines issued by Health Ministry made her ineligible to take the examination.

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She further added that when she was pursuing Class 12, most of the concepts of Chemistry, Biology and others were unclear and it is hard to expect what questions will be asked in entrance examinations. Therefore, restricting NEET to three attempts will only benefit few students but not everyone.

However, the government gave relief to the aspirants who took AIPMT thrice earlier. These candidates, if plan to appear for NEET 2017 need not worry as their attempt will be considered as the first attempt.