The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India has increased 5200 MBBS seats under the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) reservation quota across the country for the academic session 2019-20 but none of them are for Tamil Nadu. The reason, Dr A Edwin Joe, Director of Medical Education in Tamil Nadu, said is because the State government did not want it.

"It is a policy decision of the (state) government whether to accept EWS or not. We had written to the Tamil Nadu government that the Government of India is offering this but they have not replied positively to us. The state government has to approve the requisition. Only then we can ask for it," explained Dr Joe. Earlier this month, the Tamil Nadu government had announced at the Assembly that it has taken a decision to accept the EWS quota if it does not cause any trouble to the backward and scheduled castes in future.

Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare), recently announced at the Parliament that Tamil Nadu will have 600 additional MBBS seats from this year. Previous announcements had added an extra 500 seats to the state this year.

But Tamil Nadu was not the only state that was missing from Choubey's list on Tuesday — seven states and four UTs did not find their place on the list as well. While Maharashtra topped the list with 970 added seats, Gujarat was not too far behind with 700 seats followed by Rajasthan and West Bengal with 450 seats each