Just when it appeared that this year’s medical admissions in Tamil Nadu would be solely based on the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and that no further legal avenue was available to circumvent it, the Centre has added a new twist. It is now, according to Union Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, ready to cooperate with Tamil Nadu in its efforts to obtain a one-time exemption from NEET . Tamil Nadu, which abolished entrance tests for professional courses in 2006, fears that the introduction of NEET would jeopardise the admission prospects of rural students who cannot afford the extra coaching and higher workload that preparing for NEET entails. In its desperation to get around the NEET barrier, it passed two Bills seeking to preserve its existing system of admitting students to medical and dental courses based on Class 12 marks. However, the Centre, understandably reluctant to grant such exemption to one State alone, did not recommend presidential assent to these Bills. As admission season closed in, the State government decided to go by NEET rankings, but reserved 85% of seats for students passing out of its own school Board. The Madras High Court struck down this order. The Supreme Court dismissed the State government’s appeal. With medical admissions already delayed by a month, one would have thought the State government would see the writing on the wall and move ahead with the admission based on NEET. But its efforts were unrelenting. What it could not achieve legally, it seems to have achieved politically, albeit for just one year.
This belated move is bound to spawn further litigation and encourage similar demands elsewhere. The eleventh-hour change in the basis for admission will cause heartburn to students who have cleared NEET, a demanding test. There is no denying that the exemption will please many students, but if the Centre was ready to grant a one-time exemption, it ought to have done so much earlier and not now. The argument all along was that it did not want to treat one State alone differently; nothing was done to allay the impression that the test was being thrust on an unwilling State. Now, there is a sudden realisation that Tamil Nadu’s situation is unique. It is difficult to miss the political messaging given that it was Ms. Sitharaman, a minister involved in her party’s affairs in Tamil Nadu, who made the announcement, and not the Health Minister. If the exemption is stayed by the courts, another set of students and parents will once again feel short-changed. In any case, the State government is only postponing the inevitable, as upgrading academic standards in its own schools and preparing students for future challenges are unavoidable imperatives.
