NEET UG 2021 to be conducted in 13 languages including Punjabi, Malayalam and Urdu

For the first time, the medical entrance exam NEET-UG will be conducted in nearly 13 languages including the Punjabi and Malayam that have recently been added, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in an announcement on Tuesday. Furthermore, Pradhan added, that a new exam centre has been established in Kuwait for the NEET in a milestone, to felicitate the Indian students in the middle east.

“Registrations for the NEET(UG) 2021 has started on http://ntaneet.nic.in from 5 pm today. For the first time in the history of the NEET(UG) exam and in order to facilitate the Indian student community in the middle east, an examination centre has been opened in Kuwait,”  the Union Education Minister tweeted.

The exam will be conducted in mainly several diverse languages to ease the opportunities for each of the respective states. These include Hindi, Punjabi, Assamese, Bengali, Odia, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Urdu as well as English. The total number of cities where the medical examination will be held will also be increased from 155 to 198, the union education ministry announced. There were also plans to increase the number of examination halls from 3,862 in 2020.

"The NEET(UG) 2021 will be for the first time conducted in 13 languages with the new addition of Punjabi and Malayalam," Pradhan said, according to PTI. 

On Monday, Union Education Minister took to his Twitter handle to announce that the NEET exam which was scheduled for August 1 initially was deferred to September 13 with strict precautions adherence due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The application process for the same started on July 13, 5 pm. "The NEET (UG) 2021 will be held on 12th September 2021 across the country following COVID-19 protocols. The application process will begin from 5 pm tomorrow through the NTA website(s),” Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said. 

COVID-19 protocols for NEET exams

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced earlier yesterday that it was obligatory to maintain physical distancing at centres, and therefore he had decided to ramp up the number of cities where the examination will be conducted by 43, to198 from the previous 155. He tweeted, "In order to ensure social distancing norms, the number of cities where the examination will be conducted has been increased from 155 to 198. The number of examination centres will also be increased from the 3862 centres used in 2020.” National Testing Agency (NTA) has been established as a premier, specialist, autonomous, and self-sustained testing organization to conduct entrance examinations for admission in higher educational institutions, which will be conducting NEET exams this year. NTA will be releasing guidelines that will be followed while sitting for exams in a few days.