NExT is likely to be held in 2025; NMC may issue notice
NEW DELHI [Maha Media]: The government is planning to tell the National Medical Commission (NMC) to issue a fresh notification on National Exit Test (NExT).
As per The Print report, the government wants NMC to clarify medical students that NExT will be conducted in 2025, and not 2024 as was announced in June.
The Union Health Ministry is also urging medical education regulator NMC to include clearer instructions and address “discrepancies” found in the previous announcement.
“It will be the 2020 MBBS batch which will take the first NExT. Also, we are now writing to the NMC to release a fresh notification declaring the intent and also fixing the discrepancies which were there in the notification issued previously,” a senior health ministry official said.
After the nationwide protest against the exam, the NMC had postponed the exam till further notice.
"All the stakeholders are hereby informed that the National Exit Test (NExT) examination is deferred on the advice of the Ministry dated July 11, 2023, till further directions from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare," reads the official notification of NMC.
NExT is going to replace three existing exams in the field of medicine: the final-year Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) exams, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for post-graduate seats (NEET-PG), and the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) for foreign medical graduates to practice medicine in India.