Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Chief MK Stalin will hold an all-party meeting in Chennai on Saturday to discuss the state’s request for exemption from the National Eligibility cum Entrance Exam (NEET) and what needs to be done next this matter.
Stalin announced the decision to call an all-party meeting during a Tamil Nadu parliamentary session on Thursday. He said Parliament passed a resolution and bill against NEET in Tamil Nadu last February and sent it to Governor RN Ravi. “The governor has yet to send it to President Ram Nath Kovind for his consent,” the chief minister added.
Stalin further stated during the rally that tutoring for medical entrance exams would also benefit “rich students”. “NEET tests make schooling more expensive. We cannot remain silent bystanders,” he added.
An all-party meeting led by the DMK also sought the appointment of Union Interior Minister Amit Shah, but Stalin claimed he refused. The Tamil Nadu chief minister called the rejection “anti-democratic”.
Since the Supreme Court authorized it in the southern states in 2017, Tamil Nadu political parties and the center have been arguing over NEET. The previous AIADMK regime in Tamil Nadu passed a bill in 2017 seeking an exemption from NEET, but was rejected by the president. The state government currently led by DMK passed the Undergraduate Medical Degree Programs Act 2021 in the state legislature in September with the consent of all parties except the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
On December 28 last year, a delegation of MPs led by DMK submitted a memorandum to President Kovind’s office on the delay in consideration of the bill passed in September. The president’s office told them that the memo was sent to the federal interior ministry. According to the latest news, the center has yet to answer calls about the bill.
Notably, the DMK-led MPs submitted the memo to the president after the RTI response from the Tamil Nadu governor’s office showed that the bill originally sent to him was still under consideration.
Meanwhile, Ravi said in his maiden speech to the state legislature on Wednesday that entrance exams like NEET were “inherently discriminatory against rural students”, creating an “unequal platform”.
DMK’s parliamentary leader, TR Baalu, told reporters he was impressed that the governor had to resign because he did not bring the bill to the president.
On the other hand, the BJP called the DMK’s stance on the NEET issue a “double standard”, claiming that Shah had a lot of “workload” as the country’s home minister. “If they’ve been trying to get a date for about ten days, he hasn’t seen them yet,” Karu Nagarajan, general secretary of Tamil Nadu’s BJP, told the news agency.
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
