Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President and member of Parliament from the Nalgonda Lok Sabha seat N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party’s central government and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government here of playing with the lives of students by conducting examinations during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Uttam Kumar Reddy, along with other senior leaders, held a protest at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday and demanded the postponement of the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) and National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET). As per the directions of All India Congress Committee (AICC), the Congress leaders had planned to hold a dharna before the offices of the central government in Hyderabad, but were prevented from doing so by the police which was deployed in large numbers outside its Gandhi Bhavan, its head office.
Calling the Centre’s decision to hold exams “insane”, Uttam Kumar Reddy said that Covid-19 cases were at their peak in almost all the states and also pointed out that India has recorded the world’s highest spike of 77,266 Covid-19 positive cases in a single day in its latest update.
Similarly, he said that Telangana has also been been reporting nearly 3,000 cases every day from about a week. “In a situation where Covid-19 has spread to the community level, Prime Minister Narender Modi’s Government at the Centre wants to put the lives of nearly 25 lakh students and their families at stake by conducting the JEE and NEET exams,” Uttam Kumar Reddy added.
He demanded that the Centre postpone the exams to a later date and said that there was nothing important than the lives of students. Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the Congress party will continue its agitation until the government postpones the JEE and NEET exams to a later date.