New Delhi: Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin said moving education to the State List from the Concurrent List of the Constitution is the way forward to scrap the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) during his Independence Day address in Chennai on Tuesday, August 15, according to Livemint.
Stalin’s remarks come on the back of two deaths, of a teen and his father, who allegedly died of suicide, over the weekend. The teenager, S. Jagadeeshwaran (19), died by suicide on Saturday, August 12 evening, after he was unable to clear NEET. The student’s father, P. Selvasekar (48), was found dead found in his house in Chennai’s Chrompet a day after. The father died allegedly of suicide unable to bear the loss of his son.
The chief minister in a special message to students on Monday, August 14, had urged them not to resort to extreme steps and vowed to ban NEET, which both the student community and their parents in the state have been demanding for long.
While hitting out at governor R.N. Ravi who refused to sign the Bills passed by the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly banning NEET in the state, Stalin, in his special message, urged President Droupadi Murmu to grant assent at the earliest to the state’s NEET exemption Bill, which “was the collective will of the people of Tamil Nadu”.
He had also written to Murmu highlighting that the Bill adopted was the “outcome of Legislative consensus, stemming from the collective will of the people of Tamil Nadu” and “each day of delay in its implementation costs not only valuable medical seats to deserving students but invaluable human lives to our society.” He pointed out the Bill was pending though the Tamil Nadu government had given clarifications to comments raised by various Union Ministries, The Hindu reported.
Stalin’s government had brought Bills on the proposed legislation to ban NEET in the Assembly twice, only to see them returned by the governor. As the matter pertained to the Concurrent List, the Bill was forwarded to the President for her assent.
However, the DMK government and Ravi have had several run-ins over the Bill. Ravi’s remarks made on Saturday, August 12, also made the Stalin government angry. “Given to me, I shall never give it. Be sure about it,” Ravi had said.