Sharad Yadav calls for abolishing NEET; says it discriminates against poor

Pitching for the scrapping of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admission into medical colleges, JD(U) Rajya Sabha member Sharad Yadav today said the Centre and the states should argue against it in court.

He also said Parliament should enact a new law, restraining the Centre from interfering in the affairs of state government-controlled medical and engineering colleges, if need be.

Referring to a 19-year-old girl committing suicide in Tamil Nadu for failing to get admitted into a medical college due to her poor NEET score, the veteran JD(U) leader described the common eligibility test as "grossly faulty and discriminatory on many counts".

India had various school education boards and it was discriminatory to "impose" the NEET on the state board students, he said, while arguing that as the test was based on the CBSE syllabus, it denied a level-playing field to the state board students.

Stating that the state board students needed to take special coaching classes in order to compete in the NEET, Yadav, in a statement, said, "This is again a discriminatory practice as the students from an economically weak background will falter on this count. The NEET will finally result in proliferation of the coaching business and the poor will suffer."

Thus, the common eligibility test should be done away with, he added.

"If need be, Parliament should legislate that the Union government will not interfere in the affairs of the state government-managed medical and engineering colleges," Yadav said.