Kerala tops NEET in south region

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala has maintained a ‘neat’ record in the NEET (National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test) held last year. Eighty per cent of its students qualified in the test, which is the highest in the southern states, while Tamil Nadu  has plunged to the bottom with 39 per cent. NEET is the qualifying test for MBBS and BDS courses for all medical colleges across the country. Of the total  71,889 candidates from the state who registered for the test, 65,447 appeared and 52,208 qualified, as per the statistics sourced by this newspaper.

Among those who qualified, 14,270 were boys  and 37,938 girls. Of them,  2,747 were Scheduled Castes, 215 Scheduled Tribes, 30,819 OBCs and 18,427 other candidates. A vast network of specialised coaching centres and the trend of repeat attempts contributed to the state’s performance. The state has decided to make admissions to   ayurveda, homoeopathy, siddha, unani, agriculture, veterinary, fisheries and forestry courses also from the NEET (UG) 2017 conducted by the CBSE. NEET is, however,  mandatory for MBBS and BDS courses only. Tamil Nadu which has the lowest qualifying percentage of 39 has decided to approach the centre seeking exemption from NEET.

TN Chief Minister Edappadi Palanisami is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to seek the Centre’s help in this regard. The CBSE has been denying the statistics claiming that the board does not maintain such information. Former Joint Commissioner for Entrance Examinations (JEE) Rajoo Krishnan told Deccan Chronicle that NEET  was a qualifying test only. The decision to admit students from the NEET test rather than conducting the state entrance examinations had  not made any impact on  admissions. It would neither increase nor decrease the chances of students qualifying from the state to the medical courses, Mr Krishnan said.