The move by Jayalalithaa, a day after President Pranab Mukherjee signed the Ordinance, has the potential to develop in a constitutional debate between the executive and the judiciary.
Given that the government is in minority in the Rajya Sabha and Jayalalithaa’s support is much-needed for the passage of some of key Bills, including GST, the Centre would have to devise a new strategy to resolve the impasse which could develop between the judiciary and the executive.
According to legal experts, if Jaya sticks to her demands, it would raise a debate on whom should the elected governments be accountable to — the judiciary or the people?
Though the Centre has kept the “honour” of Supreme Court order in the NEET case but only after Union Minister Arun Jaitley criticised the role of the judiciary in encroaching into legislative domain.
Commenting on the issue, a senior government official in Tamil Nadu government said: “The demands made by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa are very genuine as in Tamil Nadu there is no entrance exam for admission in medical colleges. The implementation of NEET would force students to take coaching classes, which will be put an extra financial burden on rural population.”
“The state government has its own law for selecting students for medical courses, which allows students to take admission in a respective medical college after clearing their Class XII exam on the basis of marks obtained in the exam. The objective behind enacting such law was to keep students out of the clutches of private coaching institutions as a huge number of students from rural areas go for medical studies,” the official said, adding: “Since Class XII exam is enough to judge intellectual abilities of a student, there is no need to have an another exam for a seat in medical colleges.”
In her letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has asked the Centre to ensure that the common entrance exam NEET for MBBS and dental courses should be “not forced” on her state even in future as its implementation would “nullify” certain policy initiatives and socio-economic objective of the state.
In the letter, which was released on Wednesday, Jayalalithaa said although the Ordinance would temporarily address the issue for the current year, Tamil Nadu’s “situation is distinct and different from other states.”
“Introduction of NEET would be a direct infringement on the rights of the state and would cause grave injustice to the students of Tamil Nadu who have already been covered by a fair and transparent admission policy laid down by the Tamil Nadu government, which has been working well,” she said.
She recalled that her government had taken a number of steps since 2005 in order to systematize admission process to medical seats, even abolishing entrance exams by way of a legislation which she said was even upheld by the court.