Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government has passed a Bill to provide 7.5 per cent reservation to government school students who clear NEET.
The NEET Quota Bill will provide 7.5 per cent horizontal reservation in undergraduate courses in medicine, dentistry, Indian medicine and homeopathy for government school students upon clearing NEET, the state government announced on Thursday.
However, the quota wouldn’t apply to seats reserved for the all-India quota, Live Mint reported.
Earlier, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami had said that more than 300 medical seats will go to students hailing from poor economic backgrounds due to this sub-quota.
The CM added that the students who have studied from the sixth standard to higher secondary schools in Corporation schools, municipal schools, Adi Dravidar and tribal welfare schools, Kalla reclamation schools, forest department schools and other schools managed by the state government departments would benefit from this reservation.
Justifying the sub-quota, Palaniswami said, “Of the 7,968 higher secondary schools in the state, 3,054 schools (38.32 percent) are run by the government. Of the 8.41 lakh students in higher secondary courses, 3.44 lakh students (41 percent) were in government-run schools. Of the 5,550 medical seats in Tamil Nadu, 4,043 are of state quota. Of this, only 0.15 percent of seats have been given to students hailing from poor economic backgrounds who study in government schools”