PUDUCHERRY: Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy on Thursday charged the Centre with adopting an 'anti student' stand by sticking to its guns to conduct the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to medical courses.
Referring to incidents of young students committing suicide in neighbouring Tamil Nadu allegedly due to fear of the upcoming entrance exam, the CM said despite this the central government was going ahead with its decision to hold the test.
"A good number of states ruled by Congress and parties opposed to BJP had already registered their protests to the Centre holding the test particularly during the current pandemic situation," he said and added that the Centre was "sticking to its guns making its anti student stand clear."
Narayanasamy noted that in the Union Territory, the system of selecting students for higher professional courses like medicine and engineering in the past was accomplished through the Centralised Admission Committee (CENTAC) without causing misery to the students.
"We were selecting through the CENTAC, the students on the basis of the marks obtained in the Class twelve public examination and this was very helpful to those belonging to different categories," he said.
Spelling out his government's stand on NEET, he said it should be done away with as precious lives of young students have been lost due to incidents of suicide, anxiety and fear were occurring quite often in Tamil Nadu.
Narayanasamy said he had written a detailed letter to the Prime Minister recently requesting him to dispense with NEET as it was "inflicting hardship" on the young aspirants to become doctors.
A 19-year-old teenager, who could not join medical college despite having cleared the NEET earlier and trying to improve his score this time around, allegedly killed himself in Ariyalur district of Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.