Retired judge of the Madras High Court, A K Rajan, who is the chairman of the committee to study the impact of the NEET on aspirants from the socially disadvantaged sections in medical admissions, announced that they have received 86,342 responses from people across the state. While most wanted NEET to be scrapped, some people were also in favour of the exam being conducted.
Rajan said that given the overwhelming response, the committee might take a little more than the stipulated one-month to come up with recommendations. This is the second time Rajan and the committee has released a statement on the feedback received. Rajan announced last week that the committee had received 25,000 entries. Although more people wanted it scrapped, there were many who wanted the test to be held, Rajan had said.
This time the story was a bit different. Rajan said that a majority of the responses were against conducting the medical examination. Besides Justice Rajan, who heads the panel, there are eight other members including Dr G R Ravindranath (Doctors Association for Social Equality), Jawahar Nesan (educationist) and six top government officials including Principal Secretary of Medical and Family Welfare Department.
The panel would study the data related to medical admissions in the state and make necessary recommendations within a month to safeguard the interests of students from the backward sections and "the government will initiate the next course of action after considering the recommendations," an official release had said. On June 5, Stalin had said that Tamil Nadu always had the historic duty of upholding social justice and to fulfill that duty continuously, the government is determined to take all steps to address the consequences due to the NEET.
