'What is the need for NEET exams?' asks DMK leader

CHENNAI: Batting for the ban of NEET examinations in Tamil Nadu, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader TKS Elangovan on Saturday questioned the need for the examination in the state. The DMK leader flagged the spike in number of suicide cases among NEET aspirants.

"The medical institutions are created by the government of Tamil Nadu for the students here... If another exam is conducted, the person who got more marks in the plus two exams gets lesser marks in NEET. Ultimately, we have seen many suicides. Why is this? What is the need for this? The only issue is, that the government of India don't want state governments to run medical colleges or to admit students from their own state to their medical colleges. They want to stop this. They are against the interest of the state," Elangovan said.

He said that NEET is one way of stopping the state government from intervening in medical education. "We have many medical colleges and there are many doctors who are serving the world over from the colleges in Tamil Nadu. But they don't want that to happen. The problem with this government is they don't want any institution to run. They want only Vishwakarma Yojana," he added.

Meanwhile, during the day, Tamil Nadu minister Udhayanidhi Stalin participated in a 'signature campaign' against the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) examination here in Chennai. The son of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin said that DMK plans to get lakhs of signatures in 50 days against the NEET examination.

"DMK plans to get lakhs of signatures in 50 days against NEET," Stalin Junior said, adding that after getting signatures in this campaign, CM Stalin will write to the President explaining once again our stand against NEET. With the number of cases of suicides among NEET aspirants rising, the Tamil Nadu government has been demanding to exempt the examination from the state.

During the signature campaign, Udhyanidhi said, "So far 22 lives have been lost due to NEET. Not only in Tamil Nadu, (but) in India (cases of) suicides are continuing. We have to put a full stop to this. So only (for this) we have started this signature campaign."

The exemption of NEET from the state has been a long pending demand of Tamil Nadu. The state's chief minister Stalin had earlier written to the Chief Ministers' of 12 states seeking the shifting of education to the State list from the current concurrent list in order to bring an end to the NEET examination.

In February last year, the Tamil Nadu Assembly adopted the anti-NEET bill for the second time after the Governor returned it earlier. Moreover, later, the state Governor RN Ravi referred the bill to the President for approval.