Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has written to 12 counterparts across the country, seeking the support for scrapping the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), an official statement said on Monday.
In the letter written on October 1, he has asked his counterparts of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Delhi, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, West Bengal, and Goa, to put up a united effort to restore the primacy of state governments in administering the education sector according to the Constitution.
In the letter, Stalin wrote: “Our considered position has always been that the move by the Union government to introduce NEET goes against the spirit of federalism and violates the constitutional balance of power by curbing the rights of state governments to decide on the method of admission in the medical institutions founded, established and run by them. In this regard, we consider that state governments need to assert their constitutional right and position in deciding the method of admission to their higher educational institutions.”
The state government statement also said that a delegation of DMK Parliamentarians will be handing over a translated copy of the Justice A.K. Rajan committee report studying the adverse impact of NEET on medical admissions in Tamil Nadu to the representatives of the state governments in Delhi.
The Tamil Nadu legislature has recently passed the Tamil Nadu Admission to Undergraduate Medical Degree Courses Act, 2021, based on the recommendations of the Justice Rajan committee, which had studied whether NEET had affected backward students in the past few years.
The committee was also asked to look into the feasibility of implementing alternative admission procedures and the legal steps to be undertaken to implement such fair and equitable methods.
Stalin requested his counterparts in other states to extend support after studying the documents and ensure that students hailing from rural backgrounds and marginalised sections of society are not put to hardships in obtaining admission to higher educational institutions, the statement said.