Plea in Supreme Court seeks postponement of JEE (Main), NEET-UG exams amid COVID-19
New Delhi: A plea in the Supreme Court on Thursday sought postponement of JEE (Main) April 2020 and NEET-Undergraduate examinations, which are scheduled to be conducted in September, amid spurt in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
While referring to the coronavirus pandemic, the plea has sought quashing of July 3 notices issued by the National Testing Agency (NTA), by which it was decided to conduct Joint Entrance Examination (Main) April 2020 and National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-Undergraduate exams in September.
The plea, filed by 11 students belonging to 11 states, said that the authorities be directed to conduct these exams only after the normalcy is restored.
As per the public notices issued by the NTA, JEE (Main) April 2020 is scheduled from September 1-6, while NEET UG 2020 exam is scheduled for September 13.
The plea, filed through advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, has also sought direction to the authorities to increase the number of examination centres for these exams.
"Conducting the aforesaid examination across India at such perilous time, is nothing else but putting lives of lakhs of young students (including petitioners herein) at utmost risk and danger of disease and death. The best recourse at this stage can be to wait for some more time, let COVID-19 crisis subside and then only conduct these exams, in order to save lives of the students and their parents," the plea said.
It claimed that NTA, which conducts entrance exams for admission in higher educational institutions in India, has decided to conduct JEE (Main) April-2020 through online mode and NEET UG-2020 exams through offline mode at 161 centres across India.
It alleged that NTA has indefinitely postponed the National Council of Hotel Management Joint Entrance Examination-2020, which was scheduled to be conducted on June 22, in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"While deciding to conduct the aforesaid JEE (Main) April-2020 and NEET UG-2020 exams in the month of September, 2020, the respondents (NTA and others) have overlooked that many states have refused to allow conducting of any professional or non-professional exams in their states at this stage and hence the same is likely to cause unimaginable harassment to the petitioners and other similarly situated students," it said.
"It is respectfully submitted that the students who are well equipped with computer and strong internet connection will give online exams while in other hand the students who are unable to give and arrange online exams, will have to come to exam centres by risking their lives. This is a discrimination between students which must be avoided," it claimed.
The plea has alleged that concerned authorities have ignored the plight of lakhs of students from Bihar, Assam and north eastern states, which are presently reeling under flood, and conducting either online or offline exams in such places may not be possible.
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Bengaluru: In a significant move towards enhancing disaster preparedness, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), in collaboration with UNICEF, launched the Karnataka State Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap (KSDRR) 2025-2030 on Monday, marking the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.
With this initiative, Karnataka has become the fifth state in India to launch the Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap, following Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Assam, as reported by The New Indian Express.
The new roadmap is designed to mitigate the impact of natural disasters and reduce the state’s vulnerability. Over the past five years, Karnataka has suffered an estimated Rs 1 lakh crore in losses due to floods, droughts, lightning, hailstorms, fire, and other calamities. Addressing these challenges, Mullai Muhilan, Director of KSNDMC, emphasised that the goal of the KSDRR is to implement a systematic approach to preventing and managing such disasters.
“The theme on this day is ‘Fund Resilience, Not Disasters’, and that is why this roadmap is a framework of existing solutions to reduce and prevent losses by mitigating floods, drought, earthquakes, heat waves and so on,” TNIE quoted Muhilan as saying.
The KSDRR outlines a multi-phase strategy, which includes a vulnerability profile of Karnataka, highlights DRR developments, initiatives taken in the state, financial arrangements, and defines the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders as per the National Disaster Management Act, 2005.
The roles and responsibilities, work implementation in the road map are based on three major milestones divided to achieve in five years. All departments, gram panchayats have prepared disaster management plans with latest data as baseline information.
In milestone 2 for the year 2027-28, the roadmap envisions that the state has to collaborate and partner with various stake holders from local to global level. In milestone 3, for the year 2029-30, it mentions reducing infrastructure damage, human and animal deaths, casualties by 75%.
“Currently, KSNDMC has applications including Varuna Mitra, dedicated mainly to providing weather forecast to farmers across the state. Similarly, we have Megha Sandesha, a mobile app developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science. This app was created to mitigate urban floods and it provides information to various government bodies especially BWSSB, and others. We are still working on this app to provide information and data to BDA, GBA on the areas that might flood in the future. They can use this data before giving clearance to buildings of layouts,” explained Muhilan.
As part of the roadmap, several government departments have been directed to work towards risk identification, risk reduction, preparedness, financial protection, and resilient recovery. For instance, the Education Department will be responsible for developing school-level disaster management plan.
The roadmap also outlines a robust infrastructure for real-time disaster monitoring. Karnataka has already installed 6,500 telemetric rain gauge stations at the gram panchayat level, alongside 850 telemetric weather stations at the taluk level. Other installations include lightning and thunderstorm sensors, water level sensors in Bengaluru and surrounding cities, and seismic sensors at major dam sites.
