In a statement issued by PMK President Anbumani regarding the Central Government's announcement regarding the NEET exam marks for post-graduate medical courses, the NEET qualifying marks for admission to post-graduate medical courses in india have been reduced to zero percentile. It means that all those who have appeared in NEET examination for post graduate medical course can join post graduate medical course if they have crores of money. 30 candidates scored single digit, 14 zero marks and 13 negative marks in the current year's Masters NEET exam. Doors are now open for them to join private medical colleges too. It will in no way raise the quality of medical education, it will definitely lower it. This decision is reprehensible. It is said by the central government and the National Medical Commission that more than 8,000 post-graduate medical study seats will remain unfilled in medical colleges this year, and the merit marks have been reduced because there are no qualified students to fill those seats. This is a very untenable argument. More than 90 percent of the vacancies are in private medical colleges and private affiliated universities.
This decision has been taken so that their income should not be affected in any way. As per the rules for the NEET Masters examination, out of a total of 800 marks, 291 marks for the general category and 257 marks for the reserved category were fixed as the qualifying marks. Out of 2 lakh 517 who appeared for the examination, 1 lakh 20 thousand have secured the above marks and qualified for admission to post graduate medical course. There are 45,337 total seats in postgraduate medical courses in India. What is the need to lower the qualifying marks and qualify an additional 80,000 when almost three times as many people qualify to fill them? More than 90 percent of the vacancies in post-graduate medical courses are in private colleges. The annual tuition fee for postgraduate medical courses in tamil Nadu government educational institutions is between Rs.20 thousand to Rs.40 thousand.
However, the tuition fee for postgraduate medical studies in private colleges is more than Rs.40 lakhs. 8000 seats are not filled because it is not possible for eligible students to pay this amount of tuition fee. Now 80,000 people have been given an extra chance by reducing the qualifying score to select new contenders who can pay that fee. This is social injustice.
Postgraduate medical education places should not be wasted, there is no doubt that there will be a shortage of medical professionals. By reducing the medical tuition fees in private medical colleges and junior universities and filling all the seats through the government consultation, all the seats can be filled with already qualified students. But National Medical Commission and private colleges expect that qualified students are not needed, only students with money are needed, which is the reason for all the problems and deterioration.
On the contrary, it has been proved once again that NEET was introduced only to help the private online universities to charge crores of fees without bothering about merit. It is a fact that NEET has not helped in any way to increase the quality of medical education and prevent commercialization of medical education. Therefore, Anbumani has insisted that the central government should take steps to cancel the NEET exam at all levels for medical studies.
