S. AnithaA Dalit girl student from Tamil Nadu who had moved the Supreme Court seeking not to insist on a common entrance exam for medical admission committed suicide on Friday.
S Anitha, 17, the daughter of a daily wager, took the extreme step allegedly after she did not get admission to a medical college.
Anitha did not get admission for MBBS despite scoring 1,176 marks out of 1,200 in her board exams in Tamil Nadu, as she could not perform well in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, aka, NEET.
Anitha hailed from a village in Ariyalur district, around 300 km from Chennai. Her family said she was found hanging.
Last year, the Supreme Court had exempted Tamil Nadu from NEET after the state government requested the court to do so, saying that the common entrance was apt for CBSE students and a punishment for poor students who cannot afford private tuition classes meant for cracking the test.
However, the top court refused a request to continue the exemption this year.
Though the Center had said it would support the Tamil Nadu government if it were to issue an ordinance or executive order that would effectively circumvent NEET, the central government said the opposite in the Supreme Court last week. The court then ordered Tamil Nadu to use NEET as its sole criterion for college admissions.
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