Chennai: Announcing that the Union Government had rejected the Tamil Nadu Medical Graduation Courses Admission Bill, denying the exemption from NEET sought by the State, Chief Minister M K Stalin vowed to continue the fight legally and called leaders of all the parties having representation in the State Assembly to meet at the Secretariat on April 9 and chalk out the future strategy.
Addressing the Assembly on Friday, Stalin recounted the successive and systematic measures taken to get exemption from NEET and said the national level entrance examination for medical admissions had put medical education beyond the reach of rural and poor students by providing an edge to privileged students from urban areas, who could afford coaching offered by private institutes charging heavy fees.
Recalling that it was DMK leader and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi who first cancelled entrance examinations for all professional courses in 2006, he said it upheld social justice by giving equal opportunities for students from rural areas to become doctors and thus providing a better health care system for the State.
But with NEET taking medical education beyond the reach of rural and poor students, who were unable to attend coaching classes, threatening to affect the rural medical services in poor and backward regions of the State, a committee was set up under former High Court Judge A K Rajan to come up with recommendations on medical admissions.
It was based on the recommendations of that committee that the Tamil Nadu Medical Graduation Courses Admission Bill was passed in the House on September 13, 2021, but was returned for reconsideration by the Governor, prompting the Government to call for an all-party meeting on February 5, 2022, that decided to re-introduce the Bill. That Bill was passed on February 8, 2022, and sent to the President for approval through the Governor, the Chief Minister said.
Now that the Bill had been rejected with no respect for the dignity of the Assembly and the aspirations of the people of the State, in an act that agitated against the federal principle itself, the fight against NEET would continue after seeking legal opinion from experts and based on the decision at the all-party meeting on April 9.
Expressing the State government’s commitment to the parents and students with medical college dreams to help them realize their aspirations, Stalin said that all legal avenues would be explored to do away with NEET.
Tamil Nadu had been the pioneer in medical education in the country and the reason for that was the traditional admission process followed in the State that helped students from rural and poor backgrounds compete for admission and became doctors, he said, adding that the introduction of NEET dealt a blow to the successful system.
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