India
pti-PTI
DMK member Tiruchi Siva on Thursday demanded the scrapping of the NEET examination, accused the Centre of reneging on its promises to student protesters by not withdrawing criminal cases against them, and asserted that merely making the law more stringent would not prevent examination paper leaks.
DMK’s Tiruchi Siva demanded NEET’s scrapping and criticized the Centre for not dropping cases against protesters, while AIADMK’s M Thambidurai blamed coaching centres for leaks. BJD’s Santrupt Mishra urged caution on the new bill, calling for deeper deliberation on educational system issues.
Participating in the debate on the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, Siva said while the government had accepted one of the protesters’ demands by securing the resignation of the Union Education Minister, it had failed to fulfil its assurance of withdrawing FIRs registered against student protesters.
“The government has not kept its word,” he said, adding that student leaders had warned that they would resume their agitation. Arguing that stricter laws alone would not solve the problem of paper leaks, Siva said examinations could continue to be cancelled and reconducted, causing immense mental stress to students. Reiterating the DMK’s stand, he said the party wanted NEET to be abolished.
Siva also contrasted the government’s response to the students’ agitation with its handling of other protests, saying the Centre had yielded to students within a month while refusing to do so in other cases. “Don’t underestimate the students and don’t try to deal with them using pellet guns, lathi charge and tear gas,” he said.
AIADMK member M Thambidurai blamed coaching centres for the growing menace of paper leaks and urged the government to bring a separate law to regulate or abolish them. He said coaching institutes have mushroomed across the country, becoming a breeding ground for examination mafias.
“The only solution to stop this malpractice is to abolish these coaching centres,” he said. BJD member Santrupt Mishra cautioned against rushing the legislation, saying it appeared to have been drafted in response to the student agitation rather than after careful deliberation.
“As we say, justice delayed is justice denied, but justice hurried is justice buried,” Mishra said, urging Parliament to deliberate more deeply on the structural issues affecting the education system. YSRCP member YV Subba Reddy also participated in the discussion.
