The Bill seeks to allow admissions to MBBS and BDS courses based on the class 12th marks scored by the students.
AMN / CHENNAI
The Tamil Nadu Assembly today passed a bill seeking to scrap the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) and provide for admission to medical courses based on Class XII marks to ensure social justice, as the death by suicide of a medical aspirant fearing outcome of the test he was to take echoed in the House with the main opposition AIADMK targeting the government over the incident.
The legislation was welcomed by all the parties except for the Bharatiya Janta Party.
BJP leader of the House Nainar Nagendran said that the exam was brought by the Centre to improve the quality of medical education throughout the Country.
He opposed the Bill and led the walkout of his party MLAs from the Assembly.
State Government said that the legislation was based on the recommendations of the high level expert committee headed by former Judge A.K.Rajan.
The Committee had strongly recommended eliminating NEET using legal and legislative procedures.
Moving the Bill, Chief Minister Stalin said that the legislation would ensure social justice, uphold equality and equal opportunity and protect vulnerable student communities.
He said that this would remove discrimination and bring all the students into the mainstream of medical and dental education.
The Chief Minister also said that the exam inflicts indirect pressure on the minds of the students hailing from poor backgrounds.”
Earlier, as soon as the House convened, Leader of the Opposition K Palaniswami referred to the death by suicide of 19-year old Dhanush in his native Salem district on Sunday and targeted the government on the matter.
He said that though the DMK had promised “cancelling” NEET, it was not done and several students had not prepared well. Some of his remarks were expunged by Speaker M Appavu. Palaniswami sought a job for a person from the family, besides cash assistance.
The opposition party MLAs, who came to the House wearing black badges, staged a walkout, led by Palaniswami.
On Sunday, hours before he was to appear for NEET for a third time, 19-year old Dhanush, belonging to a village near Salem, died by suicide, fearing the outcome of the test he was to take.
The incident triggered a blame game with the AIADMK holding the DMK regime responsible for the death and the state government targeting the Centre.
Stalin, replying, said NEET was conducted for the first time in Tamil Nadu when Palaniswami was the Chief Minister and it was not held even when the late J Jayalalithaa was the CM.
Recalling the death by suicides of students, including S Anita in recent years, he said all these happened when Palaniswami was the CM.
The student, Dhanush, who took the extreme step, could not clear the exam twice when the AIADMK was in power.
Stalin also targeted the AIADMK over rejection of Bills enacted during its regime in 2017 to get the state exempted from the ambit of NEET and also for hiding it from the House.
Stalin introduced the Bill and appealed to all to support it for social justice, indicating that the present initiative would be fully different from what was done before during the AIADMK regime.
The Bill, referring to recommendations of a high-level committee, said the government has decided to enact a law to dispense with the requirement of NEET for admission to UG Medical degree courses and to provide admission to such courses on the basis of marks obtained in the qualifying examination, through “Normalisation methods”, to ensure “social justice, uphold equality and equal opportunity, protect all vulnerable student communities from being discriminated and bring them to the mainstream of medical and dental education and in turn to ensure a robust public health care across the state, particularly the rural areas.”
Stalin, who welcomed the support of the main opposition party to his government’s move on NEET, recalled that in the past, when the DMK was in the opposition, it supported the then AIADMK government on the issue of jallikattu, the bull-taming sport.