UGC Revises NEET Rules: Maximum 3 Attempts, Age Bar set at 25

NEET Eligibility Criteria for Age, Attempts - As per reports, medical aspirants across the country can now appear only thrice for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). Also, a new age criterion is introduced for the aspirants to sit for the medical and dental examination.

At a meeting on Tuesday in Delhi, the University Grants Commission (UGC) took these decisions. According to the new criterion, the minimum age to appear for NEET is 17 years. The maximum age for general category candidates is 25 years, which is 30 years in the case of reserved category candidates. Earlier, neither there was a limit on the number of attempts, nor a maximum age was set.

Dr Pravin Shingare, director at the Maharashtra Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), said that there are plenty of students who keep attempting the test, and when they are not shortlisted, they join a degree college and keep attempting the test. Praveen also added that the age barrier would also bar the faculty from coaching classes who keep taking the test to analyse the changing pattern.

It may be recalled that a couple of years ago, the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) had to be conducted again as it was revealed that 90 answers had been transmitted to the candidates during the exam, for a fee of INR 15 to 20 Lacs. The AIPMT 2015 scandal had at least 45 beneficiaries who were supplied with special vests fitted with SIM cards and a Bluetooth device, among other equipment, to facilitate the transmission of answers.

While the All India data is unavailable, in Maharashtra, the number of older candidates competing with 17-year-old aspirants has been rising with each passing year. About 12,000 repeat aspirants took the CET in 2007, whereas in 2008, the number grew to 13,568. According to data collected from the DMER, the oldest candidate was 38 years old and at least another 100 aspirants were in their early 30s.

Also, the NEET 2022 exam will be conducted in 10 languages including Oriya, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati and Assamese.

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