CHENNAI: Chief minister M K Stalin on Monday urged President Droupadi Murmu to give assent to the NEET exemption bill at the earliest, as “each day of delay in implementation cost not only valuable medical seats to the deserving students but invaluable human lives to our society”. The toll of students, who died by suicide due to NEET, has increased to 16 in the state, the CM said.
In a letter to Murmu, a copy of which was released to the media, Stalin said the bill passed by the government was the outcome of the legislative consensus, stemming from the collective will of the people of Tamil Nadu. “There have been various sad incidents of students (or their parents) committing suicides, depressed by their failure to get an admission through NEET. Even recently, a student from Chromepet in Chennai and his father committed suicide due to the stress of the student’s failure in NEET… These tragedies could have been definitely avoided if our bill for exemption from NEET had been given assent and the medical admissions done on the basis of plus 2 marks,” the chief minister said.
The DMK government had been consistently opposing NEET, considering the fact the NEET-based selection favoured urban students and those who could afford costly coaching classes. It was inherently against the poor and the disadvantaged, Stalin alleged. The government constituted a committee led by retired judge of Madras high court, justice A K Rajan, to study the issue. Based on its recommendations, the state government passed the “Tamil Nadu Admission to UG Medical Degree Courses Bill,” in September 2021. The bill was returned by the governor after five months. It was readopted by the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly and sent to the governor, which had been forwarded to the Union home minister and pending for Presidential assent. Stalin said the home ministry had forwarded the comments of ministry of health and family welfare (June 2022), department of higher education, ministry of education (August 2022 and May 2023), and ministry of Ayush (January 2023) on the bill and sought clarifications. “We had also provided all the details expeditiously. But our bill has not been provided until now and the students have been forced to undergo the NEET based admission process. This has caused immense anxiety and stress in the minds of the students and parents,” the chief minister said, adding that a separate entrance exam was an unwanted additional stress on students.
