Providing a much-needed respite for medical education aspirants in Tamil Nadu, the state government has announced that 85% of the MBBS seats in the state will be earmarked for the state board students, and allotted according to their NEET scores, if the state fails to get an exemption from the examination.
Health Minister C Vijaya Bhaskar told reporters on Saturday that the remaining 15% of the seats will be reserved for students from CBSE and other boards, reported The New Indian Express.
In total, 3.46 lakh students from the TN state board wrote NEET and 4675 students from CBSE board wrote the exams. A senior official told The Times of India that from the 80,000 students who wrote NEET from Tamil Nadu, 90% were from the state board. Moreover, 50% of the questions asked in the examination was out of syllabus for state board students.
Health secretary Radhakrishnan said that it was not that the state syllabus is inferior, it is just different from the central syllabus and that about 50% of biology questions in the NEET exam was not based on state board syllabus.
The application process for the admission will be started from Tuesday and the counselling for the medical admissions is most likely to start from July 17, 2017.
This year, the state will be conducing counselling for 24 government medical colleges and also self-financing and deemed universities with equal number of seats.
The Tamil Nadu government has been opposing the NEET examination and two bills will be tabled at the assembly to exempt the state from the examination but it is yet to be sent to the Centre for presidential assent, reported TOI.