The Tamil Nadu Government got a reprieve on Sunday with Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman announcing at Chennai that the Centre was willing to give exemption to the State for one year from the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to the MBBS and the BDS courses.
Though the State Government had approached the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court to get exemption from NEET claiming that the all India test has been conceived to favour the students of the CBSE stream while the State Board students would find themselves at a disadvantage, both the courts dismissed the pleas.
The Tamil Nadu Government had issued an order keeping aside 85 per cent of the MBBS and BDS seats for State Board students. But this too was quashed by the courts. The legislation enacted by the Government to bypass the NEET for students from Tamil Nadu is awaiting approval from the President of India.
Having failed in all attempts to surmount the NEET imbroglio, Chief Minister Edappady K Palaniswamy and his council of Ministers have been lobbying with the Prime Minister and other senior Union Ministers for exemption from NEET. It is in the backdrop of these developments Union Minister Sitharaman said here on Sunday that the State would get one year exemption in terms of Government medical college admission.
“The Tamil Nadu Government can pass an ordinance seeking exemption from NEET for one year. It should specify that the exemption is for helping the rural students to get admissions to Government owned medical colleges,” said Sitharaman.
She pointed out that Tamil Nadu was already admitting students to private and deemed universities based on NEET ranking. “The problem comes only in terms of Government college admissions and also in terms of seats surrendered by private colleges to Government colleges. The Union Government could understand that rural students find it difficult to get admission to medical colleges and this exemption for one year is to help them out,” said the Minister.
Vijayabaskar, Tamil Nadu Minister for health, said later in the day that the State Government would submit a draft ordinance in this regard on Monday.