A plethora of requests, posts, and comments are flooding social media as many candidates for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), which is set to take place on August 11, 2024, confront an array of hurdles. Since they say that the exam locations are in different states, there has been an uncontrollable increase in demand for hotels because rooms in the cities listed as NEET PG centres are around one lakh per day.

Going further, Timeline found the unsettling truth that other hotels are taking advantage of the circumstance.

Hotel reservations cost a lot more for a one-night stay on August 10—the day before the NEET exam. As you can see, all hotel booking websites display an outrageous price for a one-night stay in Anantapur city on August 10 and 11. How irresponsibly they take advantage of it is demonstrated by the fact that they charge over a lakh rupees for a single day in the NEET centre city, even for a mediocre non-ac hotel.

When the date was rescheduled to August 16, it cost 1,499, which was only a 4-day extension from the NEET exam date. When we checked on the planned day, surprisingly many hotels at various centers showed as "sold out."

As an additional example, let's look at Vishakapatanam in Andhra Pradesh, which has been selected as a NEET centre. The cost of the hotel is Rs 5,744 on August 10, 2024.

However, when the exam was shifted to just two days later, the price difference dropped to about Rs 2,339 for a day, and the next weekend, it dropped to less than Rs 3,500, proving that this was a planned attempt to take advantage of the less fortunate students.

This demonstrates how bad the situation is for NEET candidates because this center was chosen by the authorities to be far away from the applicants' hometowns, and hotel owners are taking advantage of this by raising lodging rates.

Students request help on social media platforms to take into consideration their situation, as they face numerous obstacles only to go to the test center and ask for a time change or to continue taking the exam in one shift with a single paper.

Many students have been placed in centres that are far away from them, which means that they must pay enormous prices for lodging, travel, and flights. Students ask for help from authorities because of issues with transportation, climate change, and other problems.

While completing the application, students were requested to indicate their preferred locations; however, they assert that other cities were assigned in their place instead of the cities they had initially selected. This attempt to take advantage of NEET candidates can only be characterized as inhumane since it assumes that students will appear for and take this significant exam in spite of all obstacles and hardships.

(Input from various sources)

(Rehash/Priyanka Pandey/MSM)