Taking TN Example, Telangana to Seek Exemption from NEET

Hyderabad: The Congress government in Telangana is all set to pass a resolution in the upcoming Legislative Assembly session urging the Centre to exempt Telangana from the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for medical admissions in the state, according to official sources.

The state government wants to give medical admissions by conducting its own entrance exams for under-graduate and postgraduate medical courses.

It may be recalled that the DMK government had passed a unanimous resolution in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Friday urging the Centre to exempt Tamil Nadu from NEET on the ground that malpractices, cheating and scams connected to the recently declared results of NEET had made students lose faith in the entrance exam.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin also wrote a letter to Chief Ministers of states ruled by I.N.D.I.A alliance partners on Saturday, including to Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, requesting him to pass a similar resolution in the Legislative Assembly urging Centre to exempt Telangana from NEET.

Congress-led I.N.D.I.A bloc partners, including Rahul Gandhi (Congress), TMC, SP and RJD had strongly opposed NEET and demanded the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre to abolish NEET.

Against this backdrop, Revanth Reddy has reportedly decided to introduce and pass a resolution in the Legislative Assembly urging the Centre to exempt Telangana from NEET. This is in line with the stand being adopted by I.N.D.I.A alliance partners amid a massive uproar over NEET paper leak cases, which has prompted a CBI probe and crackdown against those involved in exam irregularities, official sources added.

Interestingly, the undivided Andhra Pradesh was one of the first states to oppose NEET when then Medical Council of India (MCI) issued a notification in December 2010 amending the regulations for medical admissions, making NEET a single eligibility-cum-entrance examination across India for MBBS and BDS courses, stating that there was a huge variation in the syllabus proposed by the MCI and state syllabi.

However, the state adopted NEET following the Supreme Court directions in April 2016, which ruled in favour of NEET.

Medical admissions for UG courses were earlier done through Eamcet in the combined AP. After the bifurcation of state in 2014, both AP and TG held their own Eamcet exams for medical admissions.

Due to implementation of NEET from 2016 for medical admissions, the AP and TG governments renamed Eamcet (Engineering, Agriculture and Medical Common Entrance Test) as EAPCET (Engineering, Agriculture and Pharmacy Common Entrance Test) in 2021 and 2024, respectively, to

remove the word ‘medical’ from the entrance exam on account of NEET.

Though NEET came into force from 2016, both the states continued the name "Eamcet" despite no 'medical exam' was held till 2020 (AP) and 2023 (TG).