After DMK, AIADMK also calls for NEET cancellation

Chennai: All India Anna Dravida Munnetre Kazhagam (AIADMK) coordinator O Panneerselvam on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to scrap the National Eligibility cum Entrance Exam (NEET) for admission to undergraduate medical colleges in the state

Chennai: All India Anna Dravida Munnetre Kazhagam (AIADMK) coordinator O Panneerselvam on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to scrap the National Eligibility cum Entrance Exam (NEET) for admission to undergraduate medical colleges in the state.

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The letter comes a day after the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led state government set up a committee headed by retired high court justice A K Rajan to study the impact of NEET on socially-backward students as part of the process to seek abolition of the national exam.

In his letter, Panneerselvam recalled how late former chief minister and AIADMK supremo J Jayalaithaa had objected to the NEET exam since 2011 when it was first introduced.

The move is interesting as the DMK holds the AIADMK responsible for allowing NEET to be conducted in the state after Jayalalithaa’s demise in 2016. The AIADMK, in return, has blamed the DMK as it was in coalition with the Congress during UPA-2 when the exam was introduced.

In his letter to Modi, Panneerselvam listed six reasons why the NEET exam put students, especially those in rural areas, at a disadvantage. “Tamil Nadu had among the highest number of medical aspirants, especially poor and the marginalised, in the country when admission was based on class 12 marks. However, NEET made this entrance process difficult for marginalised communities,” he wrote.

The former deputy chief minister requested Modi to take a ‘uniform policy decision to abolish’ NEET and common entrance exams for all professional courses ‘forever’.

Abolishing NEET was one of the election promises of the DMK which formed the new government after securing 159 of 234 seats with its coalition partners in the assembly elections. Opposition parties have extended their support to the government and chief minister M K Stalin also wrote to Modi in this regard.

On Saturday after cancelling the class 12 board exams, Stalin, in a separate letter to Modi, urged him to scrap all entrance exams, including NEET, in view of the pandemic. Stalin asked for the state to be allowed to fill all professional seats, including MBBS, on the basis of Class 12 marks as was the case before the NEET-scored based admission was introduced in Tamil Nadu in 2017.

“I therefore urge you to cancel the conduct of all national level entrance examinations like NEET, as the same reasons adduced for cancelling the Class XII board examinations are equally applicable to entrance examinations as well,” his letter read.

The Class 12 marks this year, he said, would be awarded by a committee headed by the School Education Department Principal Secretary. Such marks alone shall be the basis for admission to college courses, he said.

As coaching for government school students did not yield desired results, the previous AIADMK regime in October 2020 introduced a 7.5% horizontal reservation in medical colleges for students who cleared NEET for the 2020-2021 academic year, a development considered as an achievement by former chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami.

Tamil Nadu had also communicated its stance against NEET to the Centre during a meeting in May with Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal and all states to collate their opinions on conducting CBSE Class 12 exams, which were subsequently cancelled in view of the pandemic.

Experts believe that while the state’s move to scrap the NEET exam may be correct, they should not make any amendments without giving students ample time to be prepared for the change.

“NEET shouldn’t be scrapped this academic year because students have been preparing for it and there are repeaters,” education analyst and founder of Career Guidance J P Gandhi said, adding: “Any radical change should be brought in by giving students at least 12-15 months to prepare for the change.” He said that while education is in the concurrent list, states should be empowered to manage them while the Centre can offer outlines.

The DMK believes that NEET is against social justice and equality. If its appointed committee finds that the exam has affected socially backward students, they may suggest alternative admission methods and possible legal remedies for implementing it.

Educationists have supported the workings of this committee. “NEET has turned into a commercialisation of coaching classes which has turned into a multi-million industry,” Gandhi said. “Before NEET came in, Tamil Nadu students who joined MBBS with just Class 12 scores had outperformed in the NEET postgraduate exams they wrote, which shows that the argument that NEET produces better quality doctors is false.”

Bengaluru-based Tara Krishnaswamy, founder of Political Shakti and a commentator on politics, said the learnings from Covid-19 pandemic should be applied to understand that each state has to further its own healthcare system and medical education.

The pandemic has exacerbated the need for decentralising and scaling-up healthcare centres, PHCs with equipment, doctors and medical staff across hinterlands, villages, towns and small districts,” she said.

“NEET cuts students’ access to the right to education. It doesn’t encourage medical professionals within a state and the likelihood of improving your own rural areas and towns becomes lower,” Krishnaswamy said.

“It is unimaginable that a student from Punjab admitted to Madras Medical College works at a PHC in a village in Tamil Nadu and infeasible as well. But, what is likely to happen is that when a child is born and raised in a village and sees that they don’t have enough doctors and medical care, he/she wants to become a doctor and when you prioritise them, they will serve their people in these areas,” she added.

The national-level exam has gone through several legal and political wrangles in Tamil Nadu. The exam also drove several students to take their lives either for failing or over fears of not being able to clear it.

S Anitha, a 17-year-old dalit girl, died by suicide after she failed to clear the exam in 2017 despite topping her school examination in Ariyalur district with 98%. She had earlier visited Delhi, impleading herself in the state government’s petition against the exam in the Supreme Court. The plea was, however, rejected.

Anitha’s death resulted in widespread agitations against the state and central governments.