Over 200 medical aspirants and their parents gathered outside the Coimbatore collectorate on Thursday to protest against the NEET exemption by the state government. They demanded the admission process to be conducted this year using NEET scores.
The students claimed that they had cleared NEET and if the state government passes the ordinance, they will be in trouble as they were waiting for counselling and have not applied for deemed colleges or appeared for other entrance examinations.
A medical aspirant who was part of the protest said, “I’m from a small village in Coimbatore, but I got good marks and cleared NEET. Why does the government keep saying that they are exempting NEET for state government students, while the whole of last year, we were studying for NEET? What if they say next year that NEET will be there again? Instead of all this hassle, we would prefer to have the test. We want the counselling this year to be conducted according to NEET scores.”
Parents of the medical aspirants state that the government should have informed the students beforehand that they will be exempting the state from NEET.
“In 2013, the parliament passed an amendment for NEET, and the Supreme Court also had passed a law that all over India NEET must be followed. Keeping that in mind, the students were preparing for the test. About 88000 students wrote NEET and 33,800 cleared it. The students did not apply for any other deemed universities or all-India examinations. What will these students do if they are exempted from NEET? Students from the state board will be the worst affected,” said a parent.
Students and parents met the collector, where he promised to forward their petition to the state and central government.
“We have already sent petitions to state health secretary, Chief Minister, Prime Minister, President, HRD Minister and Finance Minister, asking them not to exempt the state from NEET”, said a parent.
The Tamil Nadu government on Monday handed over a draft of the proposed ordinance to the Centre through which it plans to enact to give exemption to students from NEET for admission to government colleges in the state.