Rajan Committee report on NEET was scripted for the ruling DMK: Anna Univ Ex-VC

Even as the ruling DMK and political parties like Makkal Needhi Maiam of Kamal Haasan come out against the NEET, campaigning for the Justice AK Rajan committee, former Vice-Chancellor and renowned academician of Tamil Nadu, Balagurusamy has objected to the report.

In a statement on Wednesday, he said that the report was based on skewed statistics and scripted according to the whims and fancies of the ruling party. He said that getting the President's assent to the Bill that was recently passed in the Tamil Nadu Assembly seeking exemption from NEET for the students of the state, would not be easy.

Balaguruswamy said that the committee wrote the recommendations first and then drafted content to support it. He said that the national-level competitive examinations provide students of Tamil Nadu to get admission to colleges outside of the state. The former Vice-Chancellor said that students can get admissions in Central universities, all deemed universities as also 15 per cent in all other medical colleges in India, which is positive point.

The renowned teacher also said that the NEET scores help students get admission in medical colleges abroad, as it is a reputed testing agency. Balagurusamy said that the central government has announced 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Communities (OBC) and 10 per cent Economically Weaker Section reservation in All India Quota and added that this would have helped a lot of poor students from rural backgrounds get into reputed medical colleges from the central pool.

He also said that the Justice AK Rajan Committee has not mentioned the reservation under the All India Quota in its recommendations. Selvakumar, professor of a reputed college in Madurai said, "Justice Rajan committee has recommended that admissions to medical colleges be based on +2 marks. This is not at all advisable as students from the state will not get an opportunity to get seats under central reservations in other medical colleges."

He also said that the aptitude of the students has to be tested through entrance examinations and that the marks of +2 cannot be criteria as different boards have different set of questions and marks need not be universal.