The Congress's student and youth wings took to the streets in the national capital on Thursday over alleged irregularities in the conduct of the NEET-UG and UGC-NET exams, with NSUI members forcefully entering the NTA headquarters and locking its office, and the IYC staging a huge protest at Jantar Mantar.
Here is an explainer on the functioning of the seven-year-old body.
The NTA denied any irregularities and said the changes made in the NCERT textbooks and grace marks for losing time at the examination centres were some of the reasons behind the students scoring higher marks.
The Centre on Saturday night announced that the probe into alleged irregularities in the medical entrance exam NEET will be handed over to the CBI for a comprehensive investigation.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Friday night announced the new dates of cancelled and postponed examinations, including the University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test, amid a raging row over alleged irregularities in their conduct.
'I do not think the scam is limited to 1,563 students. The number is too low to have caused such an inflation in the marks'
The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested a Zilla Parishad school teacher from Latur in Maharashtra and registered a case against four persons after it emerged that a racket was being operated to help NEET students willing to pay money to crack the exam, police said on Monday.
The Bihar Police's Economic Offences Unit, which is probing the alleged National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) (NEET-UG) paper leak case, on Saturday claimed to have obtained reference question papers of the test conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) and planned to compare these with documents recovered from a flat in Patna during a search operation last month.
Stressing that every question paper has been "accounted for", the NTA said that purported images of the question paper circulating on social media have no relation with the actual paper.
'The NEET-PG is the only exam for admission to MD, MS and PG Diploma courses.' 'Many doctors take time off from work to prepare for it, while others study during their long hospital shifts.'
The Centre on Monday made public the rules under the recently-notified anti-paper leak law, mandating the National Recruitment Agency (NRA) to prepare norms, standards and guidelines for the computer-based tests among others.
Murmu's address to the joint sitting of Parliament will also be the first after the constitution of the 18th Lok Sabha.
NEET is a court-ordered examination, supposedly aimed at meritocracy. However, over the past years when the incumbent Narendra Modi government at the Centre began implementing it, it took on political and casteist colours, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Using the hashtag, SATYAGRAHagainstExamInCovid, many students also took to Twitter to appeal to the government to heed to their demands.
The National Testing Agency announced that the JEE (Main) will be held from September 1 to 6 and NEET (UG) on September 13 after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking the postponement of the NEET and JEE.
