Dalit girl, who fought against NEET implementation in Tamil Nadu, commits suicide

S Anitha, the young Dalit girl who fought against implementation of NEET in Tamil Nadu, committed suicide today. This incident happened a week after the Supreme Court asked the state to follow National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) after the Centre said the state cannot be exempted.

According to the News Minute, the government of Tamil Nadu let down the state board students of by not revising the syllabus, making them lose out to their peers in CBSE and other boards in the NEET exams, Anita, took the fight to the Supreme Court of India, and impleaded herself as a respondent demanding an exemption to NEET for Tamil Nadu.

The Supreme Court had on August 22 ordered the Tamil Nadu government to begin medical admissions based on NEET. The SC verdict came after the Centre refused to endorse Tamil Nadu’s draft ordinance seeking one-year exemption from NEET.

The Centre, which had on August 13 said that it was willing to exempt Tamil Nadu from NEET for one year, reversed its stand with Attorney General of India KK Venugopal informing officials that the ordinance would not stand legal scrutiny.

Anita scored 1,176 out of 1,200 marks in Class 12. She scored cut-off marks of 199.75 for engineering and 196.75 for medicine. She was offered a seat in aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology, but she denied it as she wished to become a doctor.

However, her NEET scores did not make the cut: Anita had scored only 86 out of 700 in the newly introduced entrance examination.