Tamil Nadu: Udhayanidhi's 'NEET Egg' And 'Muttai' Analogy At DMK's Campaign Against Medical Entrance Exam

Tamil Nadu’s Youth Welfare Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin on Saturday launched an official campaign against the NEET examination and found a unique way to endorse his initiative. The DMK leader appeared on stage with an egg written NEET over it.

Stalin showed the crowd an egg and spoke about how the cut-off percentage for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) PG was reduced to zero percentile under Narendra Modi’s government in the Centre. Notably, egg (muttai) also means zero in Tamil.

Udhaynidhi’s campaign comes after the Centre on September 20 reduced the qualifying percentile for NEET PG 2023 to be eligible for counselling to zero across all categories.

“This showed that those who don’t qualify for the NEET-PG can secure admission by paying money,” he alleged.

Udhayanidhi was speaking in Chennai at an event where he launched a mega signature campaign against NEET.

The DMK government, which has been striving to abolish NEET as it has claimed the lives of hundreds of students in Tamil Nadu, aims to collect 50 lakh signatures in 50 days from across the state under this campaign.

At the launch, Udhayanidhi also called upon other political parties, especially the opposition AIADMK to put up a joint fight against NEET.

Responding sharply to the invite, AIADMK organising secretary D Jayakumar lashed out at the DMK for deceiving the people on the issue.

“Now, finally the DMK has let out its secret on how to abolish the NEET in the country,” he said and added that so long as people remained gullible, the tricksters would take advantage of them. He quoted a song from late Chief Minister M G Ramachandran’s film, which means how long will these people cheat,” Jayakumar said.

“The Chief Minister had said that he would abolish NEET by a single signature. Now the people, particularly the students, are wondering if the Chief Minister and his son have forgotten to put one signature to ban NEET,” he added.

Chief Minister M K Stalin was the first to endorse the campaign, taken up by the party’s youth, students, and medical wings, with his signature and casting a postal ballot.

(With PTI inputs)