Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has on Monday powered his battle against the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) by writing to 12 Chief Ministers and seeking their support to repeal the contentious national entrance exam. The development has come days after the Tamil Nadu Assembly has passed a bill to scrap the NEET in the state and when the state has been surfaced with the demands of transferring education into the state list. 

In his letter to the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, West Bengal, and Goa, MK Stalin has sought his counterparts to raise a collective demand to reclaim states' rights over education as stated in the constitution and oppose NEET. Stalin has also affirmed that the DMK MPs will meet these 12 Chief Ministers in person to convey Tamil Nadu's fight against the national exam and its flaws and how it had impacted the students from backward communities.

MK Stalin has attached the report disclosed by the AK Rajan committee in his letter to the Chief Ministers as the committee has studied the impact of NEET on students from underprivileged and socially backward backgrounds. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister has requested the 12 Chief Ministers to study the documents and extend their support in this matter towards ensuring that the students of the respective states, hailing from rural areas and marginalized sections of the society won't face any obstacles in securing admissions to pursue medical studies. 

Highlighting the report of the AK Rajan committee, MK Stalin has written that the committee was also requested to suggest alternative admission procedures which would benefit all students, the feasibility of implementing such alternatives, and the legal steps to be undertaken to implement such fair and equitable methods. He also noted that the NEET goes against the spirit of federalism and violates the constitutional balance of power by curbing the rights of the state governments to decide on the ways of admitting the students in the medical institutions. 

MK Stalin wrote, "I request you to kindly go through the documents and extend your support in this regard to ensure that the students of our respective states, hailing from rural areas and marginalized sections of the society are not put to hardship in obtaining admissions to higher educational institutions. We need to put up a united effort to restore the primacy of state governments' in administering the education sector, as envisaged in our constitution. I look forward to your cooperation in this crucial issue." 

According to reports, the DMK MPs are being instructed to hand over the translated copy of the AK Rajan report in person to the Chief Ministers and brief them about the efforts taken by the Tamil Nadu government towards repealing the NEET, which has been claiming several lives in Tamil Nadu, besides causing peril to the backward students in pursuing their dream of becoming a doctor.