JEE, NEET 2020 exam dates announced; Centre releases schedule after admit cards

Centre has clarified that the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) will be conducted in September as scheduled. While JEE (Mains) will take place from September 1 to September 6, NEET will be held on September 13.

The annoucement comes even as demands for postponing the examinations are being raised from several quarters in view of the coronavirus pandemic. Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy had also pitched in, appealing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to defer the tests till Diwali. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that the examinations cannot be postponed. Notably, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has already released admit cards for JEE (Main) this year on jeemain.nta.nic.in.

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"Now the National Testing Agency (NTA) has also released the Admit Cards for the JEE (Main) Examinations scheduled from 01-09-2020 to 06-09-2020. 649,223 candidates have downloaded their admit cards so far, against a total number 858,273. NTA is happy to share with the JEE (Main) 2020 candidates that it has been able to offer the first choice of preference of centre cities to 99.07 per cent of the candidates. 142 candidates have, subsequently requested for a change in their allotted centre city due to various reasons, and the NTA is considering these requests positively," NTA said in a statement on Friday.

For the first time, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the candidates of JEE (Main) were given the option to change their option of centre city five times, NTA said. A total of 661,911 candidates availed this opportunity and they were considered for centres based upon their revised choices, it further added.

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Announcing the dates, the NTA stated that admit cards for NEET (UG) examination will be released shortly. "As far as, NEET (UG)-2020 is concerned, again for the first time, the candidates of this examination were given opportunity five times to change their choice of centre city. A total of 95,000 candidates availed the same and they have been accommodated against their revised choices. The NEET (UG)-2020 exam is now scheduled on 13-09-2020 and the total of 15,97,433 Candidates are registered for the same. The admit cards will be released shortly. Overall, 99.87 per cent candidates will be accommodated against their first preference of Centre City," the agency said.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court had said that it finds no merit in pleas demanding postponement of JEE (Main) and NEET examinations as "ultimately life has to go on and the career of the students cannot be put in peril".

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