The NEET entrance exam for admission to medical courses across the country has been conducted since 2017. As a result, Tamil Nadu is protesting against the start and end scheme as government school students and those from rural areas are unable to enroll in medical courses.
Cancellation of NEET examination has been the main demand of other political parties in Tamil Nadu except BJP and DMD. However, the central BJP government has said that there is no room for canceling the exam saying that qualified doctors are produced only through the NEET exam.
In this situation, the results of the NEET exam held last May were released on June 4. There were allegations of irregularities such as 67 students scored 720 out of 720 marks which was never before, students who took the exam consecutively in the same exam center got the same score, mercy marks were given to students in some centers and the question paper was leaked
in this situation, a case was filed in the Supreme Court seeking to cancel this year’s NEET exam and re-conduct the exam. The National Examinations Agency informed that the mercy marks given to 1563 students in this case will be canceled and the exam will be conducted again on June 23. It has been announced that students who do not wish to retake the exam will be awarded only original marks without mercy marks.
In this context, Chief Minister MK Stalin in a press release said, “The central government’s attempt to get out of the recent NEET scandal by canceling mercy marks is another admission of their own incompetence.
After taking away the rights of the states, we should not allow the attention to be diverted from the important issues like irregularities and conduct of examinations in a professional manner,” he said.
Condemning the central government’s incompetence and apathy which is causing pain to lakhs of students, the chief minister said, “while the only solution to this problem is to restore the role of the state governments in deciding the examination system for MBBS courses.”
