The Madras High Court pulled up the government over NEET controversies over the last few weeks. The NEET exam has been constantly criticised for being unfair to students from state syllabus backgrounds especially from government schools and rural areas. At the hearing recently, the judges asked the government to respond to a couple of crucial questions and the answers were quite shocking.
"How many students wrote NEET for the first time and got an admission?"
To this, the Central government counsel said that in government colleges, it was only 1040 but the number of students who attempted multiple times and got through was 2041. With regard to self-financing courses, 588 students got admission in their first attempt while 1062 students got in after various attempts.
To this, the judges noted that students had to prepare for both 12th boards and NEET simultaneously, so they were unable to devote enough time exclusively. "The unequal have been treated equally in the NEET and the results speak for themselves," the judges said.
"How many students got admission without coaching classes?"
The government counsel said that a mere 48 students had gotten medical seats without undergoing any coaching classes and 3033 who got admission had undergone coaching classes. In self-financing courses too, the numbers were similar — 52 got in without coaching whereas 1598 had gotten in only after undergoing coaching.
The judges said that this only shows that medical education is completely inaccessible to poor students. "It is shocking to note that only negligible candidates have got admission without undergoing coaching. That means medical education is not available to the poor people and is available only to those who underwent coaching classes by spending lakhs and lakhs of rupees. Moreover, this will also put the rural students in a disadvantageous position, as they lack facilities of coaching. It should also be taken note of by the Central Government, which brought the Rules and Regulations or amendment for conducting NEET," the judges said.
