The National Testing Agency has not given any notice for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) UG. The exam has been scheduled to be held on August 01, 2021. With all board exams and other national level entrance exams being postponed, aspirants of India’a only medical entrance exam have become curious about NEET 2021.
The students are questioning if NTA will postpone the exam? If not, then when will NTA release the application form? As per the scheduled exam date of NEET 2021, the NEET application form 2021 was expected to be released by April. However, it has not been out yet.
About the postponement of the exam, there are mixed expectations of the candidates. Many students are demanding authorities to postpone the NEET exam due to rising COVID-19 cases. But some parts of the student community are in favor of holding the exam on August 01, 2021.
Answering the question of when will NTA release the application form of NEET 2021?, it can be said that decision on the application form release can be taken when the exam date is 100% confirmed. As of now conducting NEET 2021 on August 01, 2021, cannot be established 100% as the NEET exam depends on the class 12 boards.
Many states, almost all the states, including CBSE and ICSE have postponed the 12th boards. Several states such as Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha have postponed their Class 12 board exams due to rising COVID-19 cases across the country.
The decision on class 12 boards will be taken on June 01, 2021, by CBSE after analysing the COVID-19 situation of the nation then. Hence NTA will have to wait for CBSE’s and other state board’s decision on the class 12 board date sheet.
If the class 12 boards of all the state boards and CBSE, ICSE board is done by June-July, then there are high chances that the NEET 2021 exam can be held as per the scheduled date that is August 01, 2021. If the class 12 boards are not held by mid-July, then the NEET 2021 exam can be postponed to later dates.
Therefore, as per the above analysis, it can be concluded that NTA is awaiting the decision of the state boards and CBSE / ICSE boards for class 12 date sheet. Depending on class 12 new timetable that will be decided upon on June 01, 2021, NTA will take any stand on NEET 2021 dates. The application form will be thus released accordingly. Therefore the NEET application form release date might not be set before June 01, 2021.
Note that the above conclusion is drawn based on the available facts about class 12 boards postponement and how NEET depends on class 12 boards.
Apart from that, Indian Medical Association (IMA) recently requested and advised the central government to fasten the process of conducting medical entrance exams in the country. With the need for more doctors in the nation when a global pandemic is set upon us, IMA wants medical aspirants to be on their toes to join the war against the pandemic as soon as possible. Therefore they have requested to pace up the process of UG and PG medical admission and entrance process. Hence, it is highly possible that NTA will not delay the NEET UG events further as it has been already very delayed. However, it will all depend on the situation which is not predictable at this very moment.
Until now the only official information available regarding NEET 2021 is that the exam will be held on August 01, 2021. As per the official website of NEET 2021, neet.nta.nic.in (earlier, ntaneet.nic.in), the “Online Application Form will Available soon”. The last and latest notice for NEET 2021 is as follows:
