DMK Is Wrong, NEET 2021 Results Reiterate Social Justice

Almost all the major political parties in Tamil Nadu with the exception of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), particularly the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), remain consistent in their opposition to NEET. They object to it because, in their opinion, there is lack of social justice in NEET.

DMK has become vehement in its opposition after it came to power in 2021, as one of its poll promises was the abolition of NEET. So it passed resolutions twice in the assembly to that effect and sent them to the Governor. Now the DMK wants the Governor to send the resolution to the President of India.

When the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu submitted a list of demands to the Prime Minister in Delhi recently, it included the removal of NEET for the medical admissions in the state. Besides their MPs have also raised this issue in the Parliament.

An analysis of the allotment of seats in the state medical colleges for 2020 (Swarajya, June 2021) showed as to how the students belonging to the backward, most backward and scheduled castes were able to get much higher proportion of seats than their allotted quotas as per the state reservation policy.

It revealed that the students from those sections, that the DMK claims it is fighting for, have benefited hugely after the introduction of NEET. The allotment details for the government school students in the state medical colleges under the 7.5 per cent reservation for 2021 again confirmed the above trend. (Swarajya, February 2022)

The latest allocation details for 2021 for all the medical and dental seats under the state quota released by the Tamil Nadu government again establishes that there is ample social justice in medical admissions in the state, that was absent before the introduction of NEET. The Table below provides the caste wise seat allocation data after the first round of results in February 2022.

The above figures reveal that the students from the families belonging to the BC, MBC, SC and STs have got more than 96 per cent of the medical and dental seats for the latest year. Hence, there is no truth in the argument of DMK and its supporters that there is no social justice in NEET.

It is only after the introduction of NEET that such a high number of students from the poorer BC, MBC and SC categories have been entering the medical and dental colleges.

Besides, 535 students from the government schools have been allotted seats in the medical and dental colleges this time. So their another argument that the students from the government schools do not get admissions into medical colleges is again proved wrong.

Moreover, the number of students who have got seats in the All India premier institutions such as the AIIMS and JIPMER have been increasing and are higher this year. The results (first round) of the Medical Counselling Committee, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India show that 46 students from the state have got admissions in different institutions under the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

It is important to note that 40 per cent of the seats (20 out of 50 seats) in AIIMS, Madurai have been taken by the Tamil Nadu students in its first year of functioning.

In the case of JIPMER, Pondicherry, a record number of 32 seats have been taken up by the students from Tamil Nadu. It is more than one-fourth of the 121 seats coming under the general competition, after fulfilling the quotas under the state, NRI and EWS seats.

Critics of NEET like DMK note that the Tamil medium students do not get the opportunity to get medical seats under the present system. In this connection, it is significant to note that an increasing number of students from the Tamil medium are opting for NEET. This can be understood when we see that above 17,000 students have written NEET in Tamil during 2021, which is around 15 per cent of the total students who took the examination.

So the results for 2021 NEET further reiterate that it is the students from the socially and economically poorer and the disadvantaged sections who have been benefiting through this system. Hence all the arguments of the DMK and its supporters are completely wrong.

The latest results also disprove the biased opinions of the Rajan Committee Report that formed the basis for rejection of NEET by the DMK government.

It is clear that the opposition of the DMK to the NEET is not based on facts, but is kept alive only for the political reasons.

Also Read: Lies, Damned Lies And Statistics: Busting The Claims Of A K Rajan Committee Report On NEET