‘Congress only wants chaos, confusion’: Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on NEET controversy.

On Friday, Rahul Gandhi urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold a “respectful” and good discussion in Parliament on the NEET issue.Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday hit out at the Congress on the controversy surrounding competitive examinations including NEET. “Congress does not want discussion, and they are running away from it. They only want chaos, and confusion, and want to create obstacles in the entire functioning of the institutional mechanism… The President herself has addressed the issue that Congress wants to debate about, admitting the challenges and shortcomings in the process and that we have to look into them,” the minister was quoted by ANI as saying. His remarks come a day after the opposition parties including Congress protested in Parliament, demanding discussion on NEET.“On behalf of the government, I clearly said that we are ready for any kind of discussion, but Congress does not want to address the students’ issue, they want the matter to remain burning… Such issues have come to light even before 2014, but I cannot justify it,” Pradhan added. “NTA has got new leadership, reforms have been initiated in NTA under the leadership of former ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan, we have formed a new law to address the issue, and the entire case has been handed over to the CBI… A new set of examination dates were announced yesterday, which were deferred or cancelled. New dates for NEET-PG will be announced by Monday-Tuesday,” the minister said.The government replaced the National Testing Agency (NTA) director general and also set up a high-powered committee to recommend reforms in the examination process, enhance data security protocols, and review the structure and operations of the NTA. On Friday, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold a “respectful” and good discussion in Parliament on the issue of alleged irregularities in the conduct of the NEET exam.The NEET-UG was conducted by the NTA on May 5 with around 24 lakh candidates appearing.The results were announced on June 4, but they were followed by allegations of question paper leaks in states such as Bihar, besides other irregularities.