NEET impersonation scam: State’s duty is only to coach students for NEET, Tamil Nadu school education minister says

TNN | Sep 28, 2019, 06.02 PM IST

COIMBATORE: The duty of the state school education department is only to coach students to clear NEET exam, said school education minister K A Sengottaiyan on Saturday.
Answering a question on the NEET impersonation scam, the minister said the explanation given by state health minister C Vijaya Baskar on the issue was sufficient. Vijaya Baskar had said that the state was not responsible for the impersonation scam and the National Testing Agency, which conducted the exam should answer.

Five students from medical colleges in the state have been arrested in connection with the NEET impersonation scam.

Sengottaiyan said for the third consecutive year, the school education department was conducting NEET coaching classes for students. He said the classes would be held on weekends.

He was speaking to reporters after participating in a Teacher’s Day event held at a private engineering college here.

“This year, 49.46% of the students who wrote the NEET exam got minimum qualification marks in the exam and two government school students got medical seats. We are training students with a target of making minimum 500 government school students get medical seats,” he said.

The minister said it would be sufficient if students studied their Class XI and XII textbooks to clear NEET, as 90% of the NEET syllabus was in the new textbooks, he said.