NMC circular has exposed fallacy of NEET: Dr Ezhilan

CHENNAI: Thousand Lights MLA cum part-time member of the State Planning Commission Dr Ezhilan Naganathan on Friday said that the circular of National Medical Council (NMC) reducing the qualifying marks for NEET PG admission has exposed the fallacy of NEET.

Talking to media persons at the state secretariat after attending the meeting of the state planning commission, Dr Ezhilan said that when NEET was introduced, the union government had set 50% as the qualifying mark to apply for NEET PG.

In the third year, many "deemed to be universities" had enormous vacancies, hence they introduced the percentile system. Clarifying to "some former doctors and experts" that zero percentile was not zero marks, the DMK MLA, who is also a practising physician, said that when an applicant gets all 200 questions wrong, he scores -200 in NEET PG, which the NMC allows now.

"This year lowest percentile is -40. He is eligible to join PG as per the NMC circular. They attribute it to vacancy, " he added. Talking a veiled dig at state BJP president K Annamalai, the DMK MLA said that some political leaders must pay close attention to the researches.

"Someone said, there were 1.26 vacant PG seats last year. But, there are only around 65,000 PG seats in the country. That is the first lie. Last year, only 4000 seats were vacant. The 4,000 also includes clinical and non-clinical courses.

All seats were filled in government colleges. To fill the vacancies in deemed to be universities, even negative marks or – 200 has been made eligible now. It is detrimental to the quality medical care. Only if a candidate answers 197 of the 200 questions in NEET PG test correctly, he will get admission in government college."

Now, those who secure -40 marks or much book their seats through touts much in advance and secure PG admission by merely taking the test, he added.