Over 1000 residents to travel outside Valley for NEET-SS exam
Irfan Tramboo
Srinagar, Feb 4: The hospitals in Kashmir will face dearth of senior doctors for one week in the last week of March this year as over a thousand senior resident doctors from the Valley will take a week off duty and travel for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Super Speciality Courses (NEET-SS) exam due to the lack of a test center in Srinagar.
Doctors scheduled to take the exam on March 29 and 30 told Excelsior that they fail to understand why the concerned authorities have not set up an examination center in Kashmir, especially when one is designated for the NEET-PG exam every year.
“For the last three years, the NBEMS has not designated an examination center for the NEET-SS exam in Kashmir. The last time such a center was set up here was in the winter of 2021,” said Dr. Showkat Ahmad Bhat, a senior resident at SKIMS, Soura.
According to doctors, the lack of a heating system at that time led to negative feedback, which may have contributed to the cancellation of the center for future examinations-a situation that has persisted for the past three years.
The exam is annually conducted by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS).
The online submission of the application form has already begun and will continue until February 24, with results expected by April 30.
Doctors who appeared for the last NEET-SS exam had also raised this issue and demanded the establishment of a center in Kashmir, but their requests went unanswered.
Similarly, a year before that, the issue was brought up again, yet no center was set up, forcing doctors to take leave and travel to Jammu or Delhi.
It is important to note that the NEET-SS is an eligibility-cum-ranking examination prescribed as the single entrance test for admission to various DM/MCh and DrNB Super Specialty courses.
No other entrance examination, either at the state or institutional level, has been valid for admission to these courses since the 2017 session.
“The examination is held over two days, and we need at least two more days for travel-whether to Delhi or Jammu, where centers are usually set up, but not in Srinagar. This should not be the case, considering that over 1,000 senior residents from Kashmir are set to appear,” Dr. Shariq said.
“Hospitals have to arrange backup to ensure that patient care does not suffer. Junior doctors are assigned additional duties to fill in for us, which becomes an issue for hospitals as well,” the doctors said.
In 2023, when the National Medicos Organization (NMO) wrote to the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) seeking the allotment of a NEET-SS examination center in Kashmir, they were informed that the required security standards were not met at the available centers in Srinagar.
Health Minister Sakeena Itoo told Excelsior that she would examine the matter and take it up accordingly with the concerned authorities for swift redressal.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
