Srinagar: The J&K Board of Professional Entrance Examination (BOPEE) has messed up the counseling process of the students who passed the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) Under-Graduate (UG)-2021 examination.
The students who passed the NEET-2021 examination are in a state of distress and accused the BOPEE officials of creating hurdles in their pursuing careers in medicine.
The students falling in the Open Merit (OM) category said that the BOPEE authorities left their career in jeopardy by changing the seat matrix wherein seats from the OM category were allotted to students in the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category.
“It is complete injustice to us. The BOPEE should have adopted some other method to adjust the candidates from EWS,” said Farhan, an aggrieved candidate.
The OM category students on Thursday also staged a protest at Srinagar’s press enclave over the change in seat matrix by BOPEE.
The BOPEE authorities on Monday issued the revised seat matrix of NEET-UG, 2021, and ordered the withdrawal of the previous tentative seat matrix issued on February 1, 2022.
The aggrieved NEET aspirants said that the changes in seats had cost dearly to the OM candidates as only one-third of seats had been left available for OM candidates.
“Only 35 percent seats are allotted to OM category and 65 percent seats are reserved for different categories,” an aspirant said.
The candidates demanded that BOPEE should roll back the new seat matrix and seats to GMC Srinagar should be allotted as per the previous seat matrix.
Meanwhile, another group of candidates who fall in the EWS category complained to Greater Kashmir that they were not allowed to register for the counseling as BOPEE had already closed the registration link.
The students said that they did not apply under the EWS category earlier because only 5 percent of seats were allotted to the EWS category as per the previous seat matrix.
“We approached BOPEE authorities several times to open the link so that we can register our names under EWS but they did not pay heed to our pleas,” a student said.
The students appealed to Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to intervene in the issue. Advisor to LG, Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar told Greater Kashmir that the demand of the open merit category “has no meaning now”.
“It is the rule everywhere,” he said.
On the demand of left-out EWS category candidates, he said that the issue would be looked into. “I will see what can be done as we have to see how many students have applied and how many are left,” he said.