Accepting NEET, Tamil Nadu may haggle for quota for state board students

Chennai: Tamil Nadu health officials and medical education department (MED), officers despite having been told by legal advisors that complete exemption from NEET is an impossibility, continue to look upto 60% reservation for state board students. They expect the reservation in state-run colleges and state quota seats of self-financing colleges affiliated to the state medical university. Immediately after the Supreme Court allowed the Central Board of Secondary Education to declare the NEET results, health and medical education officials were seen craning their necks into legal documents to see if the 60% reservation for state board students could be turned into a reality.

"The admission will be completely based on NEET rank. After surrendering 15% for all-India quota, we want to reserve 60% of seats for state board students. Even among the state reservation, students will be picked based on NEET rank," senior official informed TOI.

The state that had done away with professional courses entrance examinations, a long time ago, also put up a stiff opposition to a common entrance examination for MBBS and BDS admissions. Despite NEET having been mandatory by the Supreme Court in 2016, the State Health Minister, C Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy had the Assembly pass two bills for exemption of the state from NEET, for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Last week, all hope for NEET exemption for the state of Tamil Nadu was lost when the Supreme Court removed the stay, and announced that it would hear all cases related to NEET. The state officials were told by their legal advisors that they had exhausted almost all options to get themselves exempted from NEET.

Read Also: SC paves way for declaration of NEET results, stays HC order

Prior to the announcement, Health Minister, Vijay Bhaskar had been optimistic about getting the President’s approval on the two assembly bills submitted for his consent. Officials had also reserved their hopes on the cases pending with the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court.

"Like in the case of PG courses, we may have to use NEET rank list as the sole criterion for selection. But since the court and MCI had earlier said, we can have our own reservation policy, legal experts say this should not be a problem," a senior medical education official stated.

"The school education department is already working on syllabus revision. Once there is a uniform syllabus, we will be able to proceed without any reservation for state board," he told the TOI.