Chennai: Terming it as a regressive step, Chief Minister M K Stalin has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to withdraw Common University Entrance Test for admissions in all Central Universities.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, a copy of which was released to the media here, he said, ‘we view this step of making CUET mandatory for all Central Universities as yet another undesirable step in the current trend of the Union government trying to sideline both the roles of State governments as well as the significance of school education system in the process of admission to higher educational institutions’.
‘Therefore, I strongly urge you to withdraw this step immediately’, he said. Stalin said the UGC has announced that from the academic year 2022-2023 the admissions for various courses in all Central Universities funded by the
UGC will be done only through CUET conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
Further, it has been said that the marks secured by students in CUET may also be followed by State Universities, Private and Deemed Universities for their admission process, if they opt so, he pointed out.
‘This regressive step has clearly vindicated the consistent stand of our government, which is based on the consensus across sections in Tamilnadu that the introduction of NEET for MBBS admissions was not an isolated instance but a definitive prelude to the larger attempt of the Union Government to centralise higher education admissions. There is no doubt that this CUET, similar to NEET will sideline the diverse school education systems across the country, grossly undermine the relevance of overall development oriented long-form learning in schools and make students rely upon coaching centres for improving their entrance examination scores’, the Chief Minister said.
