On a day when the daughter of a poor tailor from Anakaputhur in Kancheepuram district secured admission to MBBS in the prestigious Madras Medical College, the Opposition DMK staged a walkout in the Tamil Nadu Assembly protesting against the failure of the AIADMK Government to get the State exempted from the NEET.
MK Stalin, DMK president, told media persons after the walk out that the State Government did not inform the Opposition about the President of India rejecting the Bill passed unanimously by the Assembly in 2017. The refrain of the DMK and AIADMK politicians have been that students in Tamil Nadu cannot compete against the their counterparts in other States and hence they be exempted from NEET
P Jeevitha, daughter of P Bhavani who was struggling to meet both the ends of life as a poor tailor, proved the Tamil Nadu politicians wrong by cracking the 2019 National Eligibility and Entrance Test, the qualifying examination for admission to the under graduate courses in medical colleges across the country.
Senior educationists and doctors in the State are unanimous in their view that both the AIADMK and the DMK are voicing the concerns of private medical college owners who stand to lose big money because of NEET mode of admission. The year 2019 saw 59, 785 students out of the 1,23,078 who appeared for the NEET qualifying for admission to MBBS.
This is almost 10 per cent more than the students who qualified in last year’s examination. While only 39.56 per cent of the Tamil Nadu students who appeared in last year’s NEET qualified for counselling, this year it rose to 48.57 per cent, a commendable performance according to educationists.
Jeevitha managed to complete her studies thanks to the financial support extended by Dr Tamilissai Sounderarajan, the State BJP chief. Similarly, there are a number of students hailing from rural Tamil Nadu who cracked the NEET and are waiting for their MBBS admission.
But the DMK lambasted the State and Central governments for their indifference to the demand by the party to abolish the NEET once and for ever . Interestingly, the DMK was part of the UPA government which was in the forefront to introduce the NEET all over the country.
Though the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly had passed a resolution demanding the exemption of the State from the NEET and a Bill to conduct medical courses admission based on the marks scored by the students in the 12th standard, the President of India rejected the same.