CHENNAI: A division bench of the Madras High Court has disposed of a batch of public interest petitions challenging the applicability of National Eligibility-cum-Entrance-Test (NEET) for medical admissions in Tamil Nadu.
During the course of hearing on the pleas recently, a bench of Justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad was informed that the Central government had rejected the two Bills sent by Tamil Nadu government in September 2017. The Bills, unanimously passed in the Assembly, had sought exemption to Tamil Nadu from the mandatory national entrance exam.
When the matter came up for hearing on Tuesday, petitioners’ senior counsel R Viduthalai argued that the Centre should have given the reasons for the rejection.
The bench, however, disposed of the petitions after observing that “the propriety, illegality or irregularity or any other can be challenged in a writ or certiorari or declaration, as the case may be, subject of course to the pleadings, material and the maintainability of such writ petitions.” The bench, however, granted liberty to the petitioners to challenge the order of rejection subject to the maintainability of the same.
Only during the course of hearing of this case, the fact that the Centre had rejected the bills came to light.