The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a review petition filed by six opposition ruled states against its August 17 order through which it had allowed the Centre to conduct the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) in September.
A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, B R Gavai and Krishna Murari refused to entertain the review petition saying that it has not found any merit in the plea.
Six ministers from Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh moved the apex court last Friday saying that if the order was not reviewed then grave and irreparable harm and injury would befall on the student community.
The petitioners also said that the conduction of the national level entrance exams would not only affect health, welfare and safety of students appearing for the NEET/JEE examinations but also the public health at large would be in severe jeopardy.
The petitioners in the case were Moloy Ghatak (West Bengal), Rameshwar Oraon (Jharkhand), Raghu Sharma (Rajasthan), Amarjeet Bhagat (Chhattisgarh), Balbir Singh Sidhu (Punjab), and Uday Ravindra Samant (Maharashtra).
The JEE Main which was initially postponed twice due to the coronavirus pandemic is currently underway and will be held till September 6.
The JEE Advanced is to be held on September 27.
The NEET-UG exam which was also deferred twice will be conducted on September 13.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) has increased the number of examination centres from 570 to 660 for JEE Main exam.
Moreover, the number of examination centres has also been increased from 2,546 to 3843 for NEET UG exam.