EPS accepts Stalin's challenge for debate over NEET introduction

 The main Opposition AIADMK co-coordinator Edappadi K Palaniswami on Friday accepted Chief Minister MK Stalin’s challenge for a public debate over who was instrumental in bringing NEET to Tamil Nadu.

Addressing an election rally here, Palaniswami said let the debate be held in a common place in the presence of media.

“Along with our party coordinator O Panneerselvam, I am ready for the debate with Stalin as to whose regime the poisonous seed of NEET was sown in the state. We will expose who introduced NEET and during which rule it entered the state. Let the people be the judges and deliver their judgment. Whenever you invite us for the debate, we are ready for it. Are you ready,” Palaniswami countered Stalin.

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He dismissed Stalin’s allegation that the NEET was first held during the AIADMK rule. The notification for NEET was issued on December 21, 2010, by the Medical Council of India during the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre, in which the DMK was in alliance.

“The DMK was part of the UPA and S Gandhiselvan was the then Union Minister of State for Health, when the NEET was introduced,” Palaniswami said former CM J Jayalalithaa launched several legal battles against NEET. Following which, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court scrapped NEET. But, the UPA government filed a review petition in the Supreme Court despite an appeal made by Jayalalithaa. As a result, a larger bench ordered the implementation of NEET, he said.

No one can refute these facts. Stalin was trying to hide the real facts, he said.