NEET 2021 Exam Date Likely to be Announced by Feb end or early March: NTA Director General

Amidst all the speculations, NTA Director-General has announced that the NEET 2021 dates will be announced by February end or early March.

Recently, the Health Ministry had given its nod to conduct the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2021 examination twice a year. In midst of all these NEET aspirants are still waiting for clarity on the NEET 2021 dates and the official notification regarding the second attempt.

On February 23, 2021, National Testing Agency (NTA) Director-General Vineet Joshi has said that the NEET 2021 exam dates will be announced by February end or early March.   

According to the sources, NTA Director-General has given some clarity on why there is a delay in the announcement of NEET 2021 Dates and had said that “there are a total of 28 boards, two ministries, and NTA involved in the brainstorming process, so the process is taking time”.

Interestingly, a few days ago, Joshi has said that the NTA officials were in consultation with the Union Education Ministry and Health Ministry and were “hopeful” of announcing the NEET exam date “as early as possible”.

Earlier, the NTA has written to the Union Health Ministry seeking its permission to conduct the entrance test twice a year, stating that the decision would reduce the burden on the candidates.

Also, Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had earlier said that the ministry was exploring all the possibilities of conducting the exam twice a year in the interest of students during an interactive session with the students.

Last year, NEET was conducted on September 13, 2020, after being deferred twice because of the COVID-19 outbreak. A total of 7,71,500 candidates had qualified for the national level entrance exam against 13,66,000 appeared aspirants. The NEET was conducted in 11 languages, English, Urdu, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Odia, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, Tamil, and Telugu.