NEET venue shifts, distressed TN students rush to Kerala

Kochi / Thiruvananthapuram: Thousands of students from Tamil Nadu, all set to take the prestigious National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) on Sunday, were submitted to a different kind of test on exam eve. After the Supreme Court on May 3 stayed the Madras high court’s decision allowing students to take the NEET exams in Chennai, close to 6,000 students — mainly from Madurai, Tiruchirappalli and Tirunelveli -- were forced to travel hundreds of kilometres in packed trains at short notice on Saturday to reach the rescheduled exam centres in Kerala.
The district administrations in Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam – where the exams will be held today – set up help desks and worked post-haste to arrange overnight accommodation as well as transportation to the exam venues for students pouring in from the neighbouring state. Several voluntary organisations also swung into action.

Despite this, the situation at railway stations in both cities was near chaotic, as harried students and parents accompanying them were visibly struggling to make sense of the situation. “It was a bit of relief for us when we arrived here and found that there was a help desk set up to guide us. But I still have a 46-kilometer journey to the examination centre. If the exams were held in Tamil Nadu all this needless stress could have been avoided,” said G Shithivinayayam, who arrived from Ariyalur to Ernakulam to attempt NEET examination for the first time.