Telangana Congress Starts Protest Against NEET, JEE

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President & Nalgonda MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy accused the BJP government at the Centre and the TRS government in Telangana of playing with the lives of lakhs of students by deciding to conduct examinations during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Reddy, along with other senior leaders including former PCC President Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Hyderabad City Congress President M Anjan Kumar Yadav, TPCC Vice-President Dr Mallu Ravi, TPCC General Secretaries Bollu Kishan and Adam Santosh, TPCC Minorities Cell Chairman Shaik Abdullah Sohail, Congress Nampally Incharge Feroz Khan and others, held a protest at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday demanding the postponement of the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEEs) for engineering colleges and the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical colleges.

The Congress leaders actually wanted to hold a dharna before the offices of the union government, as per the directions of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC). However they were prevented from doing that by the police which deployed a large number of forces at the gates of Gandhi Bhavan at Nampally, the TPCC headquarters.

Speaking on the occasion, Reddy said that it was insane on the part of the union government to conduct JEE and NEET amid the pandemic. In a situation where Covid-19 had reached the community transmission stage, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government was planning to put the lives of nearly 25 lakh students and their families at stake by conducting the JEE and the NEET, he said.

Similarly, by silently accepting the decision taken by the Modi government, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was risking the lives of nearly 1.2 lakh students from Telangana who had registered for the JEE and the NEET, he alleged.

Reddy said that there was nothing more important than the lives of the students, and that the union government should postpone the exams to a later date.

The TPCC President also said that the candidates would face a lot of difficulties in reaching the examination centres and getting back to their homes in the absence of public transport.

"The BJP government is trying to ruin the lives of students on the pretext of saving an academic year for them. The heavens will not fall if the exams are postponed by another one or two months till the Covid-19 situation comes under control," he said.

"The Modi government did not act in time to contain Covid-19 despite the fact that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had warned about it on February 16. When the situation started deteriorating, Modi imposed an unplanned lockdown after March 22, and extended it multiple times till the 1st of June. Modi lacked the foresight and the ability to sense a possible threat. Can Modi and KCR guarantee that none of the students who are appearing for JEE and NEET, or their family members, will be infected by the coronavirus? Today they are making tall claims of framing stringent guidelines to conduct the exams. But tomorrow they will blame the students and their parents if anything goes wrong. They have never acted in an accountable manner, and they will not in future either," he alleged.

Reddy said that the Congress would continue its agitation until the government postponed the exams to a later date.