Chennai: Upping his pressure on the Centre to withdraw NEET, Tamilnadu Chief Minister M K Stalin today wrote a letter to his counterparts in 12 States, urging them to take joint efforts to retrieve the rights of States in education.
According to an official release issued by the Tamilnadu government here today, a resolution was passed in the Assembly recently based on Justice A K Rajan committee’s report, urging the Centre to cancel NEET.
The release said the Union government’s decision to implement NEET is against federalism and it amounts to snatching away the rights of States.
Stalin, according to sources in the DMK, is trying to bring up coordination among non-BJP Chief Ministers to try and abolish the exam.
He has already spoken West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan, and Maharastra’s Uddhav Thackeray on the issue, it is said.
Stalin recently tabled a Bill in the Assembly, seeking a permanent exemption from the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for the State.
‘Today, I have presented the resolution against NEET. You (AIADMK) also brought this resolution. I urge opposition parties to extend their support to this resolution,’ Stalin said in the Assembly as he moved the Bill. The Bill seeks to provide for admission to undergraduate courses in medicine, dentistry, Indian medicine and homoeopathy based on the marks obtained by students in the qualifying examination (Class 12). The Bill said the government has decided to enact a law to dispense with the requirement of NEET for admission to UG Medical degree courses and to provide admission to such courses on the basis of marks obtained in the qualifying examination, through ‘normalisation methods’.