Will NEET 2021 be postponed after CBSE board exam postponement

In view of the COVID-19 situation in the country, Union Education Minister Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal declared yesterday that the Class 10 board exams have been cancelled while the Class 12 board exams have been postponed. Following this announcement, students are questioning the status of NEET UG 2021, which is scheduled to be conducted on Sunday, 1 August 2021 in offline mode.

Note:

It is expected that 16+ lakh students are going to apply for the NEET 2021 exam.
The NEET 2021 application form as well as the official brochure is still to be released.
In 2020, the NEET exam was held on 13 September 2020 after being postponed twice due to COVID-19. More than 13.66 lakh candidates had appeared for the exam, out of which 7,71,500 had qualified.

Reasons that hint towards a probable postponement in NEET 2021 exam dates

CBSE Class 12 board examinations were previously scheduled to be conducted from 4 May 2021 to 14 June 2021. Deliberation on the new dates of Class 12 exams will be done on 1 June 2021 and shared duly with the students at least 15 days before the start of the examination.
As per the previous schedule, the board exams are supposed to continue for a period one month 10 days. This implies that even if the decision to conduct the NEET exam is taken at the earliest possible date after 1 June, there wouldn’t not be a sufficient gap for students to prepare for the NEET exam.
Further, CBSE officials would also need sufficient time to release the board results. This might also become a leading reason behind NEET 2021 postponement.

Meanwhile, until an official notification by the National Testing Agency (NTA) is released, students are expected to prepare for their exams as per the schedule at hand.