With a division bench of the Madras High Court on Monday upholding the verdict of a single bench quashing the Tamil Nadu Government order reserving 85 per cent of the total undergraduate medical and dental courses to State Board students, the Edappady Palaniswany –led AIADMK Government has decided to launch multi-pronged measures to get exemption for the State from the National Eligibility and Entrance Examination.
Justices N Ramamohana Rao and M Dhandapani had on Monday dismissed a batch of petitions challenging the July 14 order of Justice K Ravichandra Babu who had declared null and void an order issued by the Tamil Nadu Government reserving 85 per cent of the total medical seats in Tamil Nadu to students who are from the State Board stream.
“When the MCI notification stipulates the qualifying examination as NEET and such notification was upheld by the Supreme Court, the State Government cannot make the selection by making this impugned reservation , thereby diluting the object of NEET. What the State Government is not able to achieve till this date by way of legislation cannot be achieved by passing the impugned order. When the students of the CBSE are also the domicile of this State, they cannot be given step motherly treatment by making the impugned reservation,” Justice K Ravichandra Babu had said in his order.
The Tamil Nadu Government and a number of students from the State Board strem had appealed against the order pronounced by Ravichandra Babu. The Government’s claim in the appeal was that the questions for NEET were prepared by the CBSE with an eye to ensure that students from CBSE stream got advantage in the test. However the Bench did not accept the reasons put forward by the Tamil Nadu Government.
“Once the students drawn from CBSE syllabus, State Board syllabus and other boards have taken the NEET, all of them have an equal and fair opportunity to compete against each other and establish their relative merit. Thus the allotment of 85 per cent seats on pro-rata basis which is an attempt to further classify the students is based on a completely artificial basis, opined the division bench.
The Tamil Nadu government has decided to challenge the Madas High Court order in the apex curt.
A high level delegation led by State Health Minister Vijayabhaskar met the union health minister J P Nadda in the capital on Monday. The team that met Nadda was of the view that the Centre may help Tamil Nadu to tide over the NEET conundrum by giving it the exemption. But with Tamil Nadu being the lone state challenging the NEET, the Centre may have to tread on a sticky wicket to save itself from a major dilemma.