If NEET Continues, TN May Go Back To Pre-Independence Days: Justice AK Rajan-Led Committee’s Report

The report also said that Tamil Nadu would go down in the rank among states in the Medical and Health Care system.

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Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government on Monday made the recommendations of former Justice AK Rajan committee on the impact of the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) public. The 165-page report was submitted to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on July 14 and AK Rajan then speaking to the media said that the report predominantly suggested on cancelling the selection of medical aspirants based on the NEET markings.

Further on Monday, the publically made document accessed by ABP Live said, “If NEET continues for a few more years, the Health care system of Tamil Nadu will be very badly affected. There may not be enough doctors for being posted at the various Primary Health Centre’s. There may not be enough expert doctors for being employed in the Government Hospitals.”

“Further the rural and urban poor may not be able to join the medical courses. Ultimately Tamil Nadu may go back to pre-independence days, wherein small towns and in villages only “bare-foot‟ doctors catering for the needs were available,” it said.

The report also said that Tamil Nadu would go down in the rank among states in the Medical and Health Care system. Hence, the Committee recommended the State government to undertake immediate steps to eliminate NEET from being used in admission to medical programmes at all levels by following the required legal and/or legislative procedures.”

As a step towards eliminating NEET, the Committee said, the state government can also pass an Act indicating the need to eliminate NEET at all levels of medical education and get President's assent. It also said that higher secondary scores can be made as the sole admission criteria for admissions into the first-degree medical programmes and to ensure equal opportunity for students from different boards of education by normalising the scores. 

The report added, "The socio, economic and other demographic "adversities" that cause poor performance of all relevant students, mainly the disadvantaged and underprivileged, in their HSc examination shall be identified, and according to the degree of intensities of adversities, re-profiling of scores can be done using a pre-developed framework of “Adversity Score‟."

Further, the committee suggested that the school education up to the level of higher secondary can be reformed in such a way that "coaching" is changed into "learning" and all the curriculum and assessments including board exams can be tweaked to enable and empower students with subject knowledge and high reasoning, decision making, social disposition and so on.

Lastly, the Committee also told the government to pass an Act for bringing all the Deemed Universities of Tamil Nadu under the purview of the state government and receive the President's assent. 

Apart from Justice AK Rajan, the committee had members including TN Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan, General Secretary Of Doctor's Association Social Equalities GR Ravindranath and Director of Medical Education Narayana Babu.