Chennai: The Madras high court has observed that the non-revision of the state board syllabus for the last 10 years, poor quality of teaching imparted to students and the decision of the Union government in appointing CBSE as the agency to conduct Neet are the primary reasons for state board students scoring low marks in Neet.
Justice N. Kirubakaran made the above observation orally while hearing a petition from S. Kiruthika, a state board student aspiring to get a medical seat.
The judge said the union government should have appointed a neutral agency to conduct Neet. When students from various boards were writing the examination, CBSE should not have been given the task of preparing the question papers. It was obvious that it would pick questions from CBSE syllabus and the pattern would also be that of CBSE, the judge added.
Referring to a news report about the death of a parent who committed suicide on the apprehension that her daughter would not get a medical seat, due to the uncertainty prevailed on Neet based counselling, the judge said the court could understand the efforts put by students to score good marks in board examinations. Now their dreams of getting a medical seat have been shattered. The state government must ensure that such distressed students and their parents do not resort to extreme steps like suicide, by providing proper counselling to them, the judge added.
In her petition, Kiruthika, said she had scored 1,184 marks in, the board examinations with a centum in Biology, 199 in Physics and 198 in Chemistry. However, she scored 174 marks out of 720 in Neet. Since the state government has passed a bill and subsequently an ordinance seeking exemption from Neet, she did not purchase the application. But, now the admission would be based on Neet alone. Now, the state government has requested the Union government to sanction more than 2,000 seats for 1st year MBBS course in addition to the present strength.
Therefore, she filed the present petition to permit her to participate in the counselling without insisting the application, she added.
After hearing arguments from both sides, the judge said he would pass orders on Thursday.
