Greta Thunberg (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The protest against holding the engineering and medical exams – JEE and NEET – amid a global crisis has found support in Swedish child activist Greta Thunberg. Taking to Twitter, the child activist wrote, “It’s deeply unfair that students of India are asked to sit national exams during the Covid-19 pandemic and while millions have also been impacted by the extreme floods. I stand with their call to #PostponeJEE_NEETinCOVID”

It’s deeply unfair that students of India are asked to sit national exams during the Covid-19 pandemic and while millions have also been impacted by the extreme floods. I stand with their call to #PostponeJEE_NEETinCOVID

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 25, 2020

It has been months that students from across India have been tweeting against holding of exams amid pandemic. Recently, the Supreme Court has dismissed the plea of postponing the exams stating that the organising body — National Testing Agency has taken all precautionary measures. “Career of students cannot be put under jeopardy for long,” the SC had said.

Slightly over 24 lakh students are appearing for JEE and NEET combined. The exams for admission to undergraduate engineering courses will begin from September 1 while for medical admissions, NEET will be held on September 13.

A section of students and academicians are worried that a further postponement of exams can lead to loss of a year. Asking the Union government to find an alternative mode of selecting and enrolling students, the Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia had written on Twitter in Hindi, “Approach of considering NEET and JEE as the only modes of admission is very narrow and impractical. As the educational institutes across the world are adopting newer ways for admission, why can we not consider them in India?”