A plea was filed before the Supreme Court by a parents’ body seeking directions to the National Testing Agency (NTA) to hold the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for the year 2020 as per schedule in September.

The plea by Gujarat Parents Association submitted that postponement of the exams will result in loss of an academic year for students who are set to take the exam and will have a great bearing on their professional career and life.

“These exams are so important that they determine students’ career and also the entire life. As such, the Respondent Authorities must take into consideration as a relevant factor, the fact that any further deferment of the examination will further add to the stress levels of the students resulting in further traumatising the students with the uncertainty of their future and thereby severely impacting their academic performance in the ultimate examination to be held in future,” the petition said.

The plea comes days after another plea was filed before the top court by eleven students seeking indefinite postponement of JEE and NEET in view of Covid-19 pandemic. They had claimed that conducting JEE and NEET during such a perilous time will put lives of lakhs of young students in danger and had, therefore, sought directions to be issued to NTA to hold JEE and NEET after normalcy was restored post Covid-19 crisis.

JEE is scheduled to be held from September 1 to 6 and NEET is slated for September.

The JEE score is the basis for admission to engineering institutes like the National Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Technology. Similarly, admission to medical and dental undergraduate courses is through NEET.

JEE and NEET, which were initially scheduled to be held in April and May respectively, were postponed to July due to Covid-19 outbreak.

On July 3, the NTA, which is the central government body tasked with conducting JEE and NEET, came out with public notices to hold of JEE and NEET in September.