NEET Mode of Examination: Decision on Online or Offline Format to Be Announced Soon, Says Pradhan

The Education Ministry has held two rounds of talks with the Health Ministry led by Union Minister JP Nadda.

The Education and Health Ministry are deliberating on whether to conduct medical entrance exam NEET-UG in pen and paper mode or online mode and a decision in this regard is expected soon, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Tuesday.

The Education Ministry has held two rounds of talks with the Health Ministry led by Union Minister JP Nadda.

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Currently, NEET-UG is conducted offline – in pen and paper mode – wherein students have to solve multiple choice questions on an OMR sheet.

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) is the largest entrance exam in the country in terms of number of candidates appearing for the test. In 2024, a record over 24 lakh candidates took the exam.

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"The health ministry is in charge of administration. Therefore we are discussing whether to hold it in pen-and-paper format or an online format," NDA chairman and HRD minister Prakash Javedkar. "We've been meeting Health Ministry, who was headed by JP Nadda in the first and second rounds of discussions and take on whichever form will come across the best for examination conduct will be taken care by us NTA is more than ready, says NDA chairman Javdekar".

The Minister further said a decision in this regard is expected soon and the reforms would be implemented in the 2025 edition of the exam.
 "What will be NEET's methodology, what will be the protocol…a decision is expected soon. We will notify it soon," he added.

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The NTA administers the NEET every year for admission in the medical colleges. A total number of 1,08,000 seats are available in the MBSS course. The total number of seats under the MBBS course is almost 56,000 and about 52,000 seats are in private colleges. Undergraduate courses in the field of Dentistry, Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha also make use of NEET results for admission purposes.

The idea of switching to Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode for NEET is not something new and has been deliberated over several times before. However, the push for the reforms in the exam came with the paper leak controversy earlier this year.

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In the line of fire over alleged irregularities in NEET and PhD entrance NET, the Centre had in July set up the panel to ensure transparent, smooth and fair conduct of examinations by NTA.
According to the high-level panel headed by former ISRO Chief R Radhakrishnan, multi-stage testing for NEET-UG could be a viable possibility that needs to be followed up.

An acceptable framework with threshholds and test objectives of scoring and ranking at each stage, and number of attempts etc. may be evolved," the panel has recommended in its report.

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While NEET was under the scanner over several irregularities, including alleged leaks, UGC-NET was cancelled as the ministry received inputs that the integrity of the exam had been compromised. Both matters are being probed by the CBI.

At the last minute, two other exams- CSIR-UGC NET and NEET PG-were cancelled in a pre-emptive step.

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This also includes former AIIMS Delhi director Randeep Guleria, Central University of Hyderabad Vice-Chancellor B J Rao, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Madras K Ramamurthy, co-founder of People Strong Pankaj Bansal, a member of the board of Karmayogi Bharat and Dean of Student Affairs at IIT Delhi Aditya Mittal, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Education Govind Jaiswal.

The committee was also been tasked with examining the existing security protocols related to the setting of the papers and other processes for various examinations and making recommendations to enhance the robustness of the system.

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The panel had also opted two IIT Kanpur academicians as members — Amey Karkare, professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Debapriya Roy, assistant professor.

Read also| NCERT Textbooks to Be Cheaper Starting 2025, New Books for Classes 9-12 by 2026: Dharmendra Pradhan

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