NEET 2020 To Be Only Medical Entrance Exam, AIIMS and JIPMER Cancelled: Confirmed News

Minister of Human Resource Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal, has confirmed that NEET 2020 will be the only medical entrance exam in India from now on. All India Institute of Medical Sciences will not conduct AIIMS MBBS entrance exam 2020. Similarly Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research will not conduct JIPMER MBBS entrance exam 2020. 

Admission to 1207 seats in all the 15 AIIMS including AIIMS New Delhi and 14 others, and 200 seats in JIPMER Puducherry and Karaikal, will be on the basis of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2020 that the National Testing Agency (NTA) will conduct.

The much awaited confirmation came in Lok Sabha today. MHRD was asked six very specific questions pertaining to MBBS admissions. 

First question was to give the details of the number of entrance examination conducted by separate institutions for admission in MBBS in the country at present. Second was whether the Government is planning to implement NEET, as the only entrance examination for admission to MBBS course in the country. 

Third question was to provide details of the same, if that was to be the case and reason behind the decision. Fourth question was whether the Government has discussed this matter with all the States before its implementation. Fifth question was that if discussion was done, then the details of response along with the number of states who refused to implement this. Last question was that by which it is likely to be implemented?

The ministry provided a combined answer to all the questions. 

As per MHRD, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has provided them with information on medical entrance exams in India. 

National Medical Commission Act 2019 was given the green signal earlier in August this year. Section 14 of the said act conveys that there will be a common and uniform NEET exam for admission to undergraduate medical courses in all medical colleges, including those that come under any other law. 

As per this provision of the NMC Act 2019, the AIIMS and JIPMER medical entrance exams have been scrapped, and instead admission to the only two colleges that were previously allowed to hold their own entrance exams, will now also come under NEET. 

By this change, now students all over India need to appear in only one medical entrance exam that is NEET. Until last year, around 3 lakh students used to appear in AIIMS entrance exam, and 1-2 lakh took the JIPMER exam. Whereas for NEET, over 15 lakh had applied, and over 14 lakh appeared for the exam. With the AIIMS and JIPMER MBBS entrance exams cancelled, the number of applicants for NEET 2020 are anticipated to rise.

As per the schedule released by NTA, at nta.ac.in, NEET 2020 is scheduled to be held on May 3, 2020. It will be a pen and paper based exam. Registration for NEET 2020 will start on December 2, 2019, and will end on December 31, 2019.