New Delhi : A day after Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis met and sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to get the NEET exams postponed by a year the central government has approved an ordinance to keep state boards out of the ambit of this uniform medical entrance examination for one academic year.
The scheme for the National Eligibility-cum Entrance test (NEET) had been approved by the Supreme Court and the first phase of this examination involving 6.5 lakh students was held on May 1.
Once the ordinance is issued, it would ensure that students of the state boards do not have to appear for the second phase of the NEET examination scheduled for July 24, and the state boards shall conduct their own entrance examinations. But this exemption is only for one year, and all students will have to become a part of the uniform entrance examination from the next academic year.
The issue had been agitating several state governments, because of the difficulty related to the medium of instruction. Fadnavis had observed that the apex court order had hit the Marathi medium students hard as there are no books related to the subjects in the market and the chances of the students from interiors getting admission into medical colleges would be adversely affected. After his meeting with Modi, Fadnavis was confident of a positive outcome as the prime minister had assured him that he would be looking into the issue.
Congress opposes
Meanwhile, the Congress party has opposed the government’s decision to issue the ordinance on the grounds that it was taking a U-turn on such a crucial matter.
‘‘In the Supreme Court, the central government had taken a different stand, and after presenting everything in the court, the government has now taken a different position,” said party spokesperson P C Chacko.
He said that recently the union finance minister Arun Jaitley had said that the courts are interfering in the domain of the executive, but now by refusing to accept the verdict of the Supreme Court the government is spoiling the image of the executive as this ordinance would also be challenged.
Advocate Amit Kumar, whose petition led to the court mandating only NEET for all admissions, said: “We will challenge this Ordinance as it is not in the interest of the students or the medical colleges. The Government is no appellate body over the Supreme Court to reverse its directive through a gazette notification.”
“The Ordinance will create more confusion in the mind of the aspirants since the Supreme Court had been already lenient to those who could not prepare for NEET on May 1 by giving them enough time to appear in NEET-II ordered on July 24,” the lawyer said.
