Chennai: Tamilnadu Chief Minister M K Stalin has targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on evacuation of students from Ukraine and asserted again that NEET is a stumbling block to pursuing medical education within the country and underscored growing support against it.
In his statement, Stalin condoled the death of Naveen Shekarappa from Karnataka, who had secured 97 per cent marks in Class 12 but could not pursue medical education in India ‘due to NEET’.
The DMK had been struggling for scrapping NEET so that medical education was within the reach of the poor, he said. Referring to former Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s comments against NEET, Stalin said such comments were being made in other States, too.
‘We have been expressing ourselves against NEET not only for students in Tamilnadu but for those across the country.’
Elaborating the steps being taken by the DMK government, including the adoption of two Bills in the Assembly against NEET, Stalin said that the situation in which Indian students were caught in Ukraine was only a reminder of the objective of those Bills.
He slammed the union government, accusing certain BJP leaders of insensitive comments over the death of an Indian medical student in Ukraine’s Kharkiv.
‘Not the right time for BJP to ask why students go to small countries like Ukraine to study medicine,’ Stalin said. The DMK chief also claimed that it was not the right time for propaganda.
Stalin urged the Centre to desist from making such comments and instead come forward to fulfill its duty to rescue all the students.
Former JD(S) Chief Minister of Karnataka Kumaraswamy said Wednesday that the qualifying exam is ‘discriminatory’ and deprived rural and poor students the chance to study medicine.
Demanding the government to put an end to this entrance exam, Kumaraswamy cited Haveri’s Naveen who was killed in Ukraine as a case in point.