NEET has been scheduled to be held on September 12 this year.
Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian said that the state is against NEET (National Entrance Cum Eligibility Test) and will fight to get it scrapped. However, he added that for now, students need to prepare themselves for the upcoming exam.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, the Health Minister said, “DMK’s stance on scrapping NEET is final. There’s no two ways about it. We are hell bent on scrapping it. However, right now, we do not have legal support for this and we are fighting in court to get it scrapped. However, students need to take their NEET lessons.”
The Health Minister also added that the previous AIADMK government under Edappadi K Palanisamy failed to succeed on legal grounds when it came to cancelling NEET.
“We (Tamil Nadu government) are fighting in court to get NEET scrapped. However, if we fail at court then we do not want students to complain about not being prepared for NEET. For now, we suggest students take their lessons and be prepared for the exam,” he said.
This year, NEET has been scheduled to be held on September 12, 2021. The application process for appearing for the exam will begin from 5 pm on Tuesday, July 13 through the National Testing Agency (NTA) website. Once the registration process begins, the candidates can apply through ntaneet.nic.in for NEET UGC 2021.
Tamil Nadu has been historically opposed to NEET as it puts students who are not English-medium educated at a disadvantage when it comes to clearing the exam. State board students from Tamil Nadu find NEET to be particularly challenging as they have to face questions in English or Hindi. Further, NEET paper follows a CBSE syllabus which further discriminates state board medical aspirants because the syllabi of Tamil Nadu State education board and CBSE is quite different.
Abolishing NEET was a poll promise of the DMK and after coming to power, the government had set up a high-level committee led by retired Madras High court judge AK Rajan, to study the impact of NEET on Tamil Nadu, particularly on medial aspirants from the marginalised communities in the state.
Following this, BJP Tamil Nadu secretary, K Nagarajan, filed a case in the Madras HC challenging the constitution of this committee. Following this, on July 5, Additional Solicitor General R Sankaranarayanan filed a counter-affidavit to the case filed by the TN BJP secretary.
Source: The News Minute