Thousands of students and their parents held demonstrations all over Tamil Nadu on Thursday against the Union Government’s move to grant one more exemption to the State from the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to the undergraduate medical and dental courses. More than 32,000 students who qualified in the 2017 NEET face uncertainty as the process for this academic year’s admission to MBBS and BDS courses have been put on hold till next Tuesday by the Supreme Court.
The apex court asked the State Government to furnish a detailed report about the number of students from Tamil Nadu who were qualified in the NEET 2017. “The decision of the Centre to heed to the plea by the State Government to exempt it from the NEET for this academic year has come as a set-back to all the students who qualified in the NEET 2017,” said the mother of a student who was demonstrating in front of Kilpauk Government Medical College.
She said her daughter who was a State Board student had opted for the CBSE stream because of the Medical Council of India’s move to make NEET mandatory for admission to MBBS and BDS. “Thousands of students like my daughter had opted for the CBSE syllabus in 2015 itself. Now the Tamil Nadu Government’s move to revert back to the marks scored in the Plus Two as the benchmark for MBBS and BDS admissions have shattered our dreams,” she said.
The contention of the Tamil Nadu Government and the major parties like the DMK, the AIADMK and other Tamil chauvinist outfits is that the NEET has been conceived in such a way that it discriminates against rural students. But the NEET 2017 results proved them wrong as out of the 83,859 students who appeared in the NEET about 33,000 students were qualified.
“This means that 38.84 per cent students from the State have qualified for the MBBS course. This is a reasonably good pass per cent when compared to the national average,” said JSN Murthy, former Vice Chancellor, Sri Ramachandra University.
When the efforts to get exemption from NEET failed, the Tamil Nadu Government enacted a special legislation reserving 85 per cent of the seats to students from the State Board stream. This order was quashed by the Madras High Court as well as the Supreme Court. It was to overcome the apex court order that the Government issued an ordinance last week reserving 85 per cent of the seats in Government medical colleges and the seats surrendered by the self financing medical colleges to the Government for the State board students.
This ordinance was challenged by the aggrieved students in the Supreme Court and this resulted in the directive to the State government by the court.
Some of the political outfits like VCK are alleging that the move to introduce the NEET was part of the saffronisation drive by the Centre and should not be introcuced in Tamil Nadu. Vaiko, the MDMK leader, has demanded a permanent exemption to Tamil Nadu from NEET.