CBSE will hold the NEET undergraduate examination on 7 May 2018
As Tamil Nadu government appears to keep hopes alive of getting the state's students an exemption from the national medical entrance exam, a leader of the opposition made an outrageous promise to students to outdo the ruling AIADMK. Former transport minister KN Nehru told a group of students protesting against the national exam that the DMK would have allowed students to cheat if it had not been able to get them an examination from the medical entrance exam.
"For how long will Tamilians remain honest?" the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) lawmaker from Tiruchirappalli West said on Monday, according to news agency ANI.
"You allow copying in Bihar, MP (Madhya Pradesh) and it is all done openly. Why?" the DMK's Trichy strongman appeared to reason, apparently playing on the images of students blatantly cheating in exams from states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Just a day later, there were reports of a teacher in Uttar Pradesh helping students cheat in the state's board examination.
It, however, isn't state governments but the central board of secondary education that conducts the National Eligibility Entrance Test, or NEET, examination. This year, the CBSE has announced there is no change in the syllabus.
Students in Tamil Nadu have been uncomfortable with the entrance examination that they believe places students from the state board at a disadvantage. Tamil Nadu had abolished entrance exams nearly a decade earlier and medical admissions had been offered on the basis of Class 12 marks. It was then argued that this would not place rural students in state board schools, who can't afford private coaching, at a disadvantage.
Last year, 17-year-old student who had scored excellent marks in her class 12 exam but failed to get admission to a medical college had killed herself.