NEET-UG medical entrance exam to be conducted on May 4, announces NTA

NEET-UG will be conducted on May 4 in pen and paper mode, NTA announced.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) announced that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-UG medical entrance exam will be conducted on May 4.

(Representative image) A seven-member high-level committee was set up by the Union government last year after uproar over the botched NEET-UG examination process that saw spiralling allegations of question paper leaks, inflated marking, and arbitrary allowance of grace marks. (HT PHOTO)

A total of 1,08,000 seats are available for the MBSS course. Approximately 56,000 are in government hospitals, and about 52,000 in private colleges.

The NEET-UG exam is also a way to secure admissions to undergraduate Dentistry, Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha undergraduate courses.

Registration date

NTA said the application process for NEET-UG, the largest entrance exam in the country in terms of the number of candidates, began on Friday, February 7, and will conclude on March 7. In 2024, more than 24 lakh aspirants appeared for the exam.

The NTA announced last month that the exam would continue to be conducted in pen-and-paper mode. The decision came after detailed deliberations between the education and health ministries on whether to conduct the NEET-UG in pen-and-paper or online mode.

Last year's exams were marred by allegations of irregularities, including paper leaks and litigation. Under fire over these allegations, the Centre set up a panel in July last year to ensure the transparent, smooth, and fair conduct of examinations conducted by the NTA.

The UGC-NET exam was cancelled after the home ministry received information that its integrity had been compromised. The CBI is probing allegations surrounding both NEET-UG and UGC-NET.

Panel recommendations

The Centre's panel on exam reforms suggested overhauling the NTA, prompting the Ministry of Education to restrict it to conducting entrance tests and not recruitment exams.

Among the recommendations are implementing a DIGI-EXAM system to check impersonation, multi-stage and multi-session testing, a test centre allocation policy, setting up secured test centres in each district, and mobile testing centres in rural and remote areas.

A trusted question bank, a secured and trusted testing platform that facilitates secure storage of question paper, setting up one secure Standard Testing Centre (STC) in each district and Mobile Testing Centres (MTCs) to facilitate aspirational districts from rural, remote and inaccessible areas are among the recommendations made in the report.

(With PTI inputs)