Bihar boy who travelled 700 kms to appear NEET misses exam by 10 minutes after authorities deny entry

Guwahati: Amid the ongoing pandemic, a resident of Darbhanga in Bihar travelled for more than 24 hours and covered around 700 kilometres distance to reach Kolkata for his National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). However, the youth was late by 10 minutes and was not allowed to enter the examination centre at a school in Salt Lake.

Santosh Kumar Yadav says he pleaded the authorities to allow him to sit for the exam, but they said he was late. The examination started at 2 pm. He had reached the centre around 1.40 pm, and the last deadline for entering the centre was 1.30 pm. Yadav has rued that he lost a whole year due to this terribly unfortunate event.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the NEET examinees were asked to report at least three hours in advance to enable security and health checks.

Yadav said that he boarded a bus at Darbhanga at 8 am on Saturday to reach Muzaffarpur. From there, he took a bus to Patna which got delayed by almost six hours due to traffic snarls.

He then took another bus from Patna at 9 pm, which dropped him near Sealdah station (in Kolkata) at 1.06 pm. He reached the examination centre in a taxi.

This comes against the backdrop of the NEET examinees becoming a subject of nationwide debate as many students had to travel from to the examination centres in hired cars because of the ongoing crisis.

Many examinees in the state of West Bengal have complained that they have had to face an uphill task to sit for exams due to ongoing issues.

West Bengal BJP President Dilip Ghosh launching salvoes at the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government, said that while the Supreme Court (while dismissing a petition for delaying NEET and JEE) said that students should get all help to travel and get accommodation, during JEE exams the examinees in West Bengal had to face a lot of difficulties. Even Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that around 70 per cent of students could not take the test.

State education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee said that the students have had to face problems because of the ongoing pandemic in the country. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee cancelled the state-wide lockdown on Saturday only to help students travel. But they still faced problems because of the pandemic situation, but many of the students still faced problems.

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