Millennium Post

NEET: Will act after CBSE move over HC order, says TN Govt

- OUR CORRESPOND­ENT

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday assured its support to NEET students from the state in the wake of the Madras High Court’s direction to CBSE to grant grace marks and said its future course of action will be based on the steps taken by the central board.

On Tuesday, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court had ordered the CBSE to grant 196 marks--4 marks each for 49 erroneous questions--in the Tamil version of this year’s NEET to those who took the exam in the regional language.

Health and Family Welfare Minister C Vijayabask­ar said the government was in “favour” of Tamil students vis-a-vis the National Entrance-cum-eligibilit­y Test (NEET).

He said “we have not received” a detailed copy of the judgement.

“The (high court) direction has been given to CBSE only. Action will be taken on behalf of our government based on the further steps to be taken by CBSE,” he told reporters here in response to a query in this connection.

Meanwhile, the CPI wel- comed the court verdict, with the party’s state secretary R Mutharasan urging the CBSE to implement the court order.

“The state committee of the CPI welcomes the high court order,” he said in a statement.

Referring to reports of CBSE mulling an appeal against the verdict, he said this would amount to “confirming the social injustice meted out” to the medical aspirants.

He said CBSE should not do so and urged the board to implement the order. Passing the orders on a public interest litigation, the high court had directed CBSE to consequent­ly revise the list of eligible candidates and publish it afresh.

The petitioner, senior CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP T K Rangarajan had sought full marks for the 49 questions, saying key words in Tamil questions were wrongly translated from English and this caused confusion among the students.

There were 180 questions with a total mark of 720 in the NEET.

The judges said the students who took the NEET for admission to medical and dental colleges in Tamil should be suitably compensate­d to provide a levelplayi­ng ground. BAGHPAT (UP): Gangster Prem Prakash alias Munna Bagrangi, who was killed in the Baghpat district jail here by a co-prisoner, had been shot at seven times, the police said on Wednesday.

The postmortem examinatio­n report of Bagrangi said he was shot at seven times by jail inmate Sunil Rathi, Superinten­dent of Police Jai Prakash said today.

He said one of the bullets had hit Bajrangi’s head and a portion of his head was badly mutilated on the right side.

“A pistol, two magazines and 22 cartridges have been recovered from a drain inside the jail,” he said, adding it was yet to be ascertaine­d as to how the pistol reached inside the jail. “A probe is on,” he added. “Bagrangi had an argument over ‘supari’ (contract killing) with Rathi after which the latter killed him. This has come to the fore but it is being verified,” he said.

Mafia don Bajrangi was shot dead inside Baghpat jail on Monday morning hours before he was to be produced in a local court in a case of extortion of money from a former BSP legislator.

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