Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) Virugambakkam constituency MLA Prabhakar Raja visited a government school in Chennai’s MGR Nagar and collected signatures from students for the party’s Anti-National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) campaign. A video of the incident has been making rounds on social media platforms. In the video, the MLA can be seen talking to students about why, according to the DMK, the students must sign the online petition. It also shows him obtaining signatures from students of two different classes.
Prabhakar Raja tells the students that the syllabus for NEET exam is different from that of the state syllabus, and that the government is continuously taking efforts to do away with the exam. The 17-minute long video also shows him asking the students what the purpose of scoring well in class 12 exam is if there is an entrance examination. The MLA even asks students to raise their hands if they are pro-NEET. He then asks Commerce students to sign for the sake of their peers in Science groups with medical aspirations.
Several X (formerly Twitter) users alleged that the political party forced students to participate in their campaign. A user @SuryaSG wrote, “Shameful. #DMK Virugambakkam MLA #PrabhakarRaja88 forcefully obtains Anti-#NEET signatures from #Chennai govt School students while school HM is fully complicit.”
Another X user @saikirankannan asked, “I have so many questions about this. 1. How can political parties enter school classrooms at will? 2. How can they force students (mostly minors) to sign up for something? 3. How are these fellows allowed to interact individually with students throwing aside safety concerns?”
When TNM contacted Prabhakar Raja for his comment, he denied allegations of having forced students to provide their signatures. He said he was on a general inspection visit to the government school located in MGR Nagar in Chennai when the students urged him to help them understand the anti-NEET stance. He told TNM, "Two Biology students from the higher classes asked me about the anti-NEET stance of the DMK. I personally explained to them how students will have to spend lakhs to be able to clear the entrance test and how unfair it is for students who are first generation learners. They then asked me to come to their classes and explain it to them."
In the video, the MLA was accompanied by several other DMK workers. However, Prabhakar Raja said that they were all at the school for a “general inspection”. It is to be noted that the DMK government aims to collect 50 lakh signatures from the people of Tamil Nadu within 50 days as an initiative against NEET. The collected signatures from this campaign will be handed over to Chief Minister MK Stalin during DMK's Youth Wing Conference that is scheduled for December 30. The signatures will then be sent to President Droupadi Murmu for consideration.