All entrance exams including NEET should be canceled ... O. Panneerselvam's letter to the Prime Minister....!

AIADMK co-ordinator O. Panneerselvam has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to cancel all entrance exams, including NEET.

In his letter to the Prime Minister on this, you know that my dear leader, the then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, was the one who had consistently opposed NEET selection for medical studies from the very beginning. When the then Central Government decided to introduce NEET for admission to undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses in 2011, the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa conveyed her strong objection in a letter to the then Prime Minister. Later, when the government was released by the federal government in 2012, he recorded his strong opposition and remained in the same position until his final breath.

Jayalalithaa has taken various steps since 2005 to regulate student admission in medical colleges, including the enactment of the Tamil Nadu Vocational Education Act in 2006.

Following in Jayalalithaa's footsteps, there are two bills, namely, the Tamil Nadu Medical Science Bachelor's and Dentistry Bachelor's Admissions Bill 2017 and the 2017 Tamil Nadu Medical and Dentistry Bill, which will be based on the marks obtained in the Class XII General Examination in 2017. The bill for postgraduate studies in medicine was passed unanimously in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly and sent to the Central Government for approval by His Excellency the President. But, unexpectedly it did not work. At this juncture, I would like to point out to myself that students in Tamil Nadu face the following difficulties in appearing for the NEED examination.

1. As the entrance examination questions are based on the syllabus of the Central Government, i.e. Rishinisiji / Singishini, it is essential that the students who have appeared in the syllabus prescribed for Class XII by the State Government will not be competitive in competing in the NEED examination and will have to train separately to write the NEED examination.

2. In such entrance examinations, rural students and students with backward socio-economic background can compete with urban students. This is due to the lack of training centers in those areas and the inability to obtain the required books in a timely manner.

3. NEED selection is detrimental to socio-economically backward poor rural students as they do not have the funds to access training centers and books for training and the place where they live.

4. Rural students are found to be unable to pay for training institutes to participate in competitive examinations.

5. The NEET examination will be canceled and as a result, the enrollment of rural students in government medical colleges will increase and the shortage of doctors in rural areas will be reduced to some extent.

6. When enrollment was held in medical colleges on the basis of the marks obtained in the Class XII general examination, the number of students from Tamil Nadu, especially the poor and marginalized students, was high. However, the introduction of NEET in Tamil Nadu has made it difficult for marginalized students to enter medical school.

For the benefit of the people of Tamil Nadu, 11 medical colleges have been sanctioned in a single year. Their initial announcements, such as the cancellation of the general election, have been well received and praised.

Similarly, in the light of the above comments, states are urged to make a policy decision to permanently cancel not only the NEED examination for medical studies but also the entrance examination for all college courses and to allow states to admit students to all courses based on the marks obtained in the high school final examination. I would like to inform you that the people of Tamil Nadu will be forever grateful to them if they take such action. Thus he has said.