Chennai based advocate files a contempt application to punish authorities for politicising NEET student suicides

The Madras High Court has advised political parties in the State not to glorify suicides by students who have failed in NEET.

Justice N Kirubakaran gave the advise, when a contempt application from AP Suryaprakasam, an advocate of Royapettah, came up before it on Tuesday. Government alone cannot be blamed, the judge said and added that the pressure exerted by parents is the primary reason for the suicides. The application sought to punish the contemnors - State Higher Education Secretary, Health Secretary and others - for wilful disobedience of the order dated August 24, 2017 of the judge. While passing orders on a writ petition from Krithika, an affected student, the judge, in August last year, had observed that the children and their parents would have been frustrated and he understood their sorrow and pain.

Before anybody could take a wrong decision, the government should give counselling to them. The government can also rope in prominent personalities through the media and advise children not to take any wrong steps and motivate them appropriately. "This alone is the need of the hour," the judge had said and appealed to educationalists and cinema personalities to give advisory to the affected students to overcome the frustration and to motivate them.

Political leaders, instead of continuing the issue as a political one, should appeal to the affected students and parents and counsel them and it would then have a soothing effect, the judge had said. In spite of the specific directives by the judge, the government had miserably failed in implementing them, Suryaprakasam contended in his present petition, and sought to punish the authorities for their failure.