The TN Government is playing with lives of the poor students by scrapping NEET

The farce being staged in Tamil Nadu over the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to undergraduate medical courses basically is ‘much ado about nothing’. The Bill adopted by the Tamil Nadu Assembly scrapping NEET was sent to Governor RN Ravi for approval. The Governor, after seeking legal counsel, sent it back to the Government stating that scrapping of NEET was against the interests of students, especially the rural and economically poor students. He also pointed out that the Supreme Court in the Christian Medical College Vellore Vs Union of India (2020) case had upheld NEET as it prevented economic exploitation of poor students. It is in this backdrop that one should see Tamil Nadu Government re-sending the Bill back to the Governor. Chief Minister MK Stalin knows well that the Governor would not sign the Bill and sit over it indefinitely. The NEET is a gift to the country by the Congress-led UPA regime in 2010 and the DMK was the second largest constituent of that Government. Though the then Chief Justice Altamas Kabir had pronounced the move as unconstitutional, a Constitution Bench unanimously ruled in favour of NEET, which was implemented by the Narendra Modi Government in 2016.

Tamil Nadu boasts of many private medical colleges where the admission was based on the management’s discretion which used to sell each MBBS seat for Rs 1 crore. The Dravidian parties portrayed isolated cases of suicide by students who failed to make it to the MBBS courses as fallout of the NEET fiasco. But the fact that many poor and economically backward students could get admission to MBBS courses has been conveniently blacked out from public knowledge by these outfits. The media in Tamil Nadu, which make a killing through advertisements issued by these private medical colleges, sing paeans to the management and the State administration. “The Government must find a permanent solution to eliminate the menace of capitation fee and profiteering by private medical colleges. More than Rs 20,000 crore is collected annually by these colleges by way of capitation fees. Formulating an all-India policy for medical admissions is the need of the hour. NEET will solve the problem to some extent,” a pro-DMK newspaper had said in 2016. The Tamil Nadu Government’s failure to bring in much-needed reforms in its school education syllabus is not being discussed by anyone who matters.