Tamil Nadu: Tamil Nadu government on Monday passed a bill to dispense admissions of Undergraduate Medical Degree Courses on the basis of class 12 marks for Medical. They scraped National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).
While introducing the Bill, Chief Minister MK Stalin said, “The state is empowered to regulate medical admission according to the Constitution’s Schedule VIII, List III and Entry 25. As a result of this government’s and other parties’ legal struggle in the state, we scripted history by getting 27% reservation for OBCs in all India quotas. In the NEET issue too, MLAs of all parties should help pass the Bill unanimously to script history in social justice.”
On June 5, the Chief minister of Tamil Nadu had constituted a high-level committee headed by retired justice AK Rajan to study the impact of NEET and the expanding coaching centres. Based on the findings of the panel, the government recommended the immediate elimination of NEET.
According to the government, the committee has pointed out that the NEET favours the rich and elite sections, equally thwarting the dream of pursuing medical education by the underprivileged social groups.
NEET has affected the rural and urban-poor students from government and Tamil-medium schools, particularly those whose families earn less than ₹ 2.5 lakh a year, the committee said.
NEET doesn’t ensure merit or standard. It only empowered low-performing students to get admission into MBBS and that the state’s healthcare system will be badly affected without enough doctors at the Primary Health Centres if NEET continues, it further said.
A study of medical admissions four years before and after NEET shows nearly a 10-time dip in state board students securing medical admission, from 380 to just around 40. But there is an exponential rise in CBSE students making it, from a mere three to over 200, almost a 70-time high. A large majority of them had taken private tuition to crack the test. A large percentage of candidates cracked NEET after preparing for two to four years.
It is a first-of-its-kind study on the impact of NEET in medical admissions through the prism of social justice, economic backwardness beyond reservations.
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