Health and Family Welfare Minister C. Vijaya Baskar and Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan must answer for last year’s fiasco in the medical admissions that led to hundreds of other States’ students getting admitted in medical colleges in the State with fraudulent nativity certificates, Madurai Central MLA P.T.R.P. Thiagarajan said.
Speaking to the media here on Thursday, he said the problem had been addressed to an extent in this year’s medical admissions as the department has tightened the conditions for obtaining and submitting nativity certificates.
Reiterating the position of his party, DMK, that National Eligibility-cum Entrance Test (NEET) must be done away with as it was against social justice, he alleged that the State government, however, miserably failed last year in ensuring that the NEET-based admissions were done at least in a proper manner. “They kept assuring till last moment that they will get exemption from NEET. When that did not happen, they issued a negligently-worded prospectus for medical admissions with inadequate conditions about nativity certificates,” he said, adding that this resulted in hundreds of deserving Tamil Nadu students failing to get seats.
Mr. Thiagarajan, the first person to move a public interest litigation in the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court in 2017 on the issue, said that at least around 1,200 students got admissions in the State’s medical colleges in 2017 with nativity certificates obtained through fraudulent means.
Stating that scrutiny by the High Court indicated that the problem was widespread than what was initially assumed, he said that there were cases where the certificates were obtained even after the last date for applying for medical seats.
Similarly, he alleged that there were cases where students who sat for NEET as students from their respective States, but later obtained nativity certificates in Tamil Nadu and applied here for the seats reserved for the State’s students. “In many cases, the certificates were issued by Deputy Tahsildars instead of Tahsildars, who are the competent authority,” he added.
Importantly, he said that the department failed to take any action against these students. “This is despite the prospectus for medical admissions in 2017-18 clearly saying that criminal proceedings will be taken and the students will be expelled if they produced false nativity certificates,” he added.
Pointing out that many cases filed in Madras High Court by Tamil Nadu students, who lost out on their opportunity due to this issue, were still pending, Mr. Thiagarajan expressed hope that they got some relief.
