Chennai: Following the outrage over the allocation of exam centres outside Tamil Nadu for Neet 2018, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has added four additional cities from the state to hold Neet 2019.

Apart from 10 cities in which the exams held in May this year, the NTA has added Cuddalore, Thanjavur, Karur and Nagercoil to the list to accommodate more students.





Over 1.14 lakh students from Tamil Nadu gave a common medical entrance test in 2018. Citing the increase in the numbers, the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) which held the previous tests has allocated the exam centres in faraway places including Kerala, Rajasthan and Haryana.

To avoid such situations, the NTA has increased the number of cities in Tamil Nadu. It has advised the students to select a city in their residential state. “In case, the number of candidates opting for a city is less than a certain minimum, NTA reserves its right not to allot any centre in that City. The candidates would be allotted centre in another city,” NTA said in the information bulletin.

The online submission of the application for Neet 2019 has commenced on Thursday (November 1). Medical aspirants can apply to the test until November 30.

The common medical entrance test will be held on May 5, 2019. The candidates can apply through the NTA’s official website www.nta.ac.in. The exam fee for other categories and BC students is Rs 1,400 and SC/ST candidates and for transgender the fee is Rs 750.

Unlike the previous years, this year, the entrance test will be held in the afternoon from 2 pm to 5 pm.

“The examination centres will open two hours before the commencement of the test. No candidate will be allowed to enter the examination centre after 1:30 pm,” NTA said. It did not give any reason for conducting the exam in the afternoon.

The question papers will be available in ten Indian languages including Tamil, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Urdu and Bengali besides English. Candidates opting for the English language will get question papers in English only and others opting for regional languages will get bilingual question papers in selected regional language and English.

“In case of any ambiguity in translation of any of the questions, its English version shall be treated as final,” NTA has said. In the previous Neet, the Neet Tamil question paper had errors in as many as 49 questions.

The exam will have 180 questions from physics, chemistry and biology. For each correct answer four marks will be awarded and for every wrong answer, one mark will be deducted from the total score.