In spite of the constant opposition from Tamil Nadu’s DMK government and chief minister towards the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2022, the state is placed in the third position for the highest number of applications. This year, the number of students who have applied for NEET 2022 is nearly 20% more than that compared with 2021. As many as 1,42,286 applicants have registered for the exam which has crossed the 1.4 lakh mark in 2019. This, as a result, has brought Tamil Nadu in the third position for the highest number of applications after Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
With nearly a month left for the examination, a coaching centre named Radiant NEET academy has been inaugurated in Tamil Nadu by the BJP state president K. Annamalai. This is a free NEET coaching centre. A tweet published by the president mentions that nearly 1,42,000 candidates will be appearing for the exams on July 17, 2022; which is 30,000 more as compared to last year. Not only that but 31,800 candidates will also be writing the exam in Tamil as well.
The free coaching academy has been started by BJP Mayor KP Saravanan Ponnusamy for helping the students of the government school students in Namakkal. On May 29, 2022; the inauguration ceremony took place and was attended by the district administrators. The BJP state presidents congratulated the prospective doctors and wished that the coaching initiative will be a hope for the future of students.
Various stakeholders and Twitter users have shown support for the initiative. In a particular tweet, a user has stated that this initiative will help in improving the Tamil students’ aptitude quality. Others have also voiced that this initiative must be spread all across the state.
State against NEET
Previously, the Tamil Nadu government had shown opposition to the conduct of the central entrance examination for medical courses. The government stated that the exam which is usually conducted on a single day puts enormous pressure on the students. This gets intensified for the students belonging to economically backward and rural backgrounds. For engineering courses, the entrance exams are conducted at both central and state levels but for medical, it’s mainly NEET. This is the reason why various political parties went against the examination. Despite that, the number of applications has significantly increased this year. The government had called for joint efforts to exempt NEET and also insist the centre gets the President’s approval on the anti-NEET bill.
