CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu State Assembly today adopted a resolution urging the Union Government to withdraw the proposal to conduct a Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for the admissions to various courses including undergraduate programmes in all Central Universities funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC) from the current academic year 2022-23.
All parties in the House except the BJP supported the resolution moved by Chief Minister MK Stalin. BJP floor leader Nainar Nagenthran led his party MLAs in a walk-out opposing the resolution.
"Since this resolution echoes the feelings of the eight and a half crore people of Tamil Nadu, on behalf of them, I urge the Union Government to withdraw the proposal to conduct CUET. I also appeal to the members of all parties in the House to support this resolution unanimously," the Chief Minister said while speaking on the resolution.
The resolution pointed out that the admission would be made based only on the marks secured by students in CUET, not taking into account the marks secured by them in Plus Two examinations and it might also be followed by State Universities, Private and Deemed Universities for their admission process if they opt so.
"The Assembly feels that any entrance examination that is based on the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus will not provide an equal opportunity to all students who have studied in varied State Board Syllabi across the country. In most States, State Board syllabus constitute more than 80 per cent of the total student population and these students invariably hail from the marginalised sections," the resolution said.
Hence, an NCERT syllabus based entrance examination would place this deserving majority in a disadvantageous position in securing admission to central universities.
"The Assembly feels that in Tamil Nadu's context this is likely to drastically reduce the number of students from our State in various central universities and their affiliated colleges. There is no doubt this CUET, like NEET, will sideline the diverse school education systems across the country, grossly undermine the relevance of overall development-oriented long-form learning in schools and make students rely upon coaching centres for improving their entrance examinations scores," the resolution further said.
The resolution also said the people of Tamil Nadu feel that it would only favour further mushrooming of coaching centres and that enforcing such an entrance examination along with regular schooling would lead to mental stress among the student community.