CHENNAI: The Jantar Mantar protest in Delhi against NEET irregularities have found resonance in Tamil Nadu, with various groups reviving the demand to ban the medical entrance exam. In Chennai, a gathering of youngsters at CPI office got a groundswell of support from various sections. In Madurai, groups defaced signboards at Sholavandhan railway station.And political leaders joined the chorus. Tamil Nadu chief minister C Joseph Vijay and former CM M K Stalin and leaders of Left parties and PMK on Wednesday wanted NEET to be abolished. Former BJP leader and ‘We the Leaders’ founder K Annamalai criticized the Union govt for not engaging the protesting students in a dialogue. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami was silent.In a statement on X, Vijay said the Union govt must respect the sentiments of students and people and abolish NEET. He said education should be moved back to the state list. As an interim measure, create a special concurrent list to empower states until the constitutional amendments are made, he said.He condemned the detention of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders in New Delhi. “Union govt’s actions are condemnable,’’ he said. Expressing solidarity with the opposition’s Parliament protest, Vijay said TVK extended its full support to the agitation. In a veiled dig at DMK, he accused political parties of repeatedly promising to abolish NEET for electoral gains without delivering.Stalin said DMK was the first to warn that “NEET was designed to enable large-scale irregularities”. He said more than any other demand, scraping NEET must be the key focus of the ongoing protests. “Only scrapping NEET will provide a lasting solution to all these problems,” he said. Stalin also noted that the TN assembly has repeatedly adopted resolutions for banning NEET and that all parties in the state except BJP were in support of the ban. “NEET is fundamentally unfair,’’ he said in another X post. Stalin chose not to comment on Rahul Gandhi’s arrest.While BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit defended the Union govt, criticising Rahul Gandhi’s sit-in protest in Delhi as an “immature and irresponsible” attempt to gain publicity, Annamalai criticised Centre. “Why did the BJP-led Centre take so long to initiate a dialogue with the protesters? Why was meaningful engagement delayed until the protest escalated to a flashpoint?’’ Annamalai said.PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss said NEET was detrimental to social justice and to disadvantaged rural students. He alleged that the entry of “outsiders” into an otherwise peaceful student protest triggered the violence in Delhi.
