Javadekar Assures Students Will Not Have to Travel Outside Home State for NEET Next Year

Chennai: Union Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday said students would not have to travel outside their state for appearing in NEET from next year as more centres would be set up based on the requirement.

"Next year, students travelling to other parts of the country would not happen," he told reporters here.

He was responding to questions on complaints about several students from Tamil Nadu being allotted centres outside the state for this year's national eligibility-cum-entrance test.

The minister said this year the number of cities were increased to 150 from 107 in the previous years for the exam.

"Now apart from those, any district which has more than 4,000 students will be made a centre. It will accommodate all students from that district and surrounding districts," he added.

On reports about erroneous questions in the Tamil version of NEET exam, the Minister said he was not aware of it.

However, he assured that steps, including engaging good translators, would be taken to avoid any complaints in future.

The minister was at Indian Institute of Technology-Madras to take part in an event to mark conclusion of grand finale of the First Hardware Hackathon edition of Smart India 2018.

Replying to a question on the proposed National Education Policy, he said "the NEP for next generation is being finalised and they will be giving me the draft within a month. It will be given to the nation soon."

During the event here, the minister held a video conference with participating students who had come up with innovative hardware solutions for problems in various sectors including - waste management, agriculture, health, automotive among others.

Students from 10 institutions including IITs, National Institute of Technology - Tiruchirappalli and the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru took part.

"India lacks in innovation. Unless we innovate, we would not be prosperous. In India we don't even manufacture stethoscope or thermometers or many things. We only import.

This is the reason why we need innovation and we need to produce," he said.

The minister had inaugurated the five-day hackathon on June 18 in Delhi.