IRUNELVELI : J Christi Pradeepa, the daughter of a driver and a beedi-roller, a scholar who scored 496 out of 500 in her class X boards and whose academic talent was appreciated by a school based in Nammakal that offered her a fee waiver, wrote a petition to Collector Sandeep Nanduri after scoring only 200 of 720 in the NEET. In her petition, she sought a solution to the issue that has put a blanket of despair over several aspirants across State and taken a life.
Pradeepa, a resident of Ittamuzhi Puthoor near Nanguneri had scored 1,176 marks in her higher secondary education. Her father is a driver and her mother a beedi-worker. “I completed my higher secondary from a Tamil medium school and scored 1,176 with a cut off of 197.50. I wrote the NEET in my mother tongue and still could not pass the examination because nearly 50 per cent of the questions asked in NEET were not present in the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) Tamil study material. How can students like me crack NEET?” she wrote in her petition. With a humble background, D2 lakh for NEET coaching is a sum she cannot afford.
After an excellent performance in her board exams, she was felicitated b the then collector, Karunakaran, but her dream of becoming a doctor remains shrouded in uncertainty. “I know that NEET is not a district-level issue. It is a State and Central issue. Still, I request the Collector to take necessary steps in finding a solution,” Pradeepa wrote in her petition. “The suicide of Anitha has deeply affected me. Countless students like me are also affected by her demise,” she added.
“My dream is to become a doctor. I did not participate in counselling for engineering admissions. As I scored 200 in NEET, I got a counselling call letter to pursue Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) in a self-financing college. Neither can I afford to join there nor do I have the financial ability to pay D2 lakh for private NEET coaching,” the girl wrote seeking the Collector’s help.