State Platform for Common School System (SPCSS) would conduct a signature and door-to-door campaign to urge the Central government to get Presidential assent for the Tamil Nadu Bill against NEET, its general secretary P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu told journalists here on Tuesday.
This would be a State-wide campaign, where the SPCSS and other supporting organisations would distribute a 24-page booklet answering all questions related to NEET and also talk about how unconstitutional it was for the Tamil Nadu Governor to delay referring the Bill to the President.
On January 30, the SPCSS would hold a fast in Chennai. If by then, the Governor and Central government had not taken steps to get Presidential assent for the Bill, Mr. Babu said he would go on an indefinite fast.
He was in Coimbatore, where he had secured the support of Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, Dravida Tamilar Katchi, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and a few other organisations.
The State government was well within its right to pass the Bill seeking to dispense with the requirement for candidates to quality in NEET to gain admission to undergraduate medical courses.
The State Board syllabus for Plus Two was as good as any other, as pointed out by the National Curriculum Focus Group in the National Council of Education Research and Training. If so why was the Plus Two examination that the State government conducted not enough for students to gain admission in medical colleges.
The irony was that while State government-conducted examination was enough, the one conducted by a testing agency based on the same syllabus was considered for medical admission, Mr. Babu argued.
He also said that through NEET, the Central government tried to promote commercialisation of medical education and support private coaching centres . Around 2.75 lakh students applied for NEET from the State. Of those, if one lakh students spent between ₹3 lakh and ₹5 lakh for coaching. “Imagine the money involved in it,” he said.
The Governor, by delaying the forwarding of the Bill for Presidential assent, was trying to create a constitutional crisis, he said and added that people would lose faith in democracy. The Bill was passed by the elected representatives in the Assembly.
