Lack of adequate seats at examination centres for those wanting to appear for NEET — post graduate courses in Tamil Nadu continues to worry aspirants in the State.
Though an additional 1,000 seats were shown for the six examination centres in Tamil Nadu a few days ago, they were opted by candidates in a day.
A day after the online application process began on October 31, applicants were shocked to find no seats available at the examination centres in Tamil Nadu - Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Salem, Tiruchi and Tirunelveli.
Several students hence chose examination centres in other States when National Board of Examination (NBE) website showed unavailability of seats in centres within Tamil Nadu.
“There are more than 10,000 aspirants who wish to write NEET-PG in January 2018. Either the number of seats in the centres should be increased or the number of centres in the State to accommodate more students from Tamil Nadu,” said N. Ravisankar, State secretary of Tamil Nadu Government Doctors Association (TNGDA).
With seats allotted to centres in Tamil Nadu being nil after two days, TNGDA had appealed to the NBE and Central Government to increase seats in all centres in order to accommodate applicants in their native State. Lack of seats was also coupled with technical glitches on the NBE website following which e-filing of a single application at times took more than six hours.
Mr. Ravisankar said that the Government and NBE should make arrangements for candidates to change their centres to their native States depending on the availability of seats.
“Some of the candidates had chosen centres in other States due lack of seats here. They should be given a chance to change centres. As the fee of the test itself is ₹ 3,750, candidates should not be put in a difficult situation to spend more for travel and accommodation. Around 4,000 doctors who are currently practising at Government and private hospitals in the State will also appear for the test,” Mr. Ravisankar said.
