Over the last four years, the overall pass percentage of NEET-UG has remained nearly constant, but some states including Gujarat, Meghalaya and Nagaland have made big gains. A few like Telangana, Kerala and Manipur have shown a dip in performance.
While Tamil Nadu, which has consistently opposed the introduction of NEET irrespective of party in power, substantially improved its performance between 2019 and 2021, this time, the state’s qualifying rate decreased by 6.1 percentage points over last year.
In 2022, the pass percentage (number of candidates who qualified with respect to those who applied) of 21 states and UTs was below the national average of 56.3 per cent. In 2021, when the pass percentage was 56.3 per cent, 20 states and UTs performed below the national average, while the corresponding number was 18 in 2019, when the NTA had taken charge of conducting NEET from the CBSE.
Apart from the north-eastern states of Assam (51.37 per cent), Manipur (54.72 per cent), Meghalaya (51.13 per cent), Nagaland (54.51 per cent), Tripura (49.59 per cent) and Sikkim (43.89 per cent), the states which registered pass percentages below the national average in 2022 are Tamil Nadu (51.3 per cent), Chhattisgarh (48.73 per cent), Kerala (55.01 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (44.88 per cent), and Uttar Pradesh (53.52 per cent).
While Meghalaya and Nagaland performed below national average, the pass percentages of these states have improved substantially over the years. Meghalaya had registered a pass percentage of 36.27 per cent in 2019, while it was 34.52 per cent in Nagaland.
Other states to have recorded an increase in qualifying rate of over five percentage points between 2019 and 2022 are Gujarat (46.35 to 64.77), Maharashtra (39.26 to 46.47) and Assam (44.23 to 51.37).
States which have slipped significantly include the southern states of Andhra Pradesh (70.72 to 61.77), Kerala (66.59 to 55.01), Telangana (67.44 to 59.27). In contrast with most Northeastern states , Manipur’s performance fell (63.38 to 54.72).
Madhya Pradesh (50.15 to 44.88), Uttar Pradesh (58.61 to 53.52) also recorded marginal dips. In the case of Tamil Nadu, the pass percentage rose from 48.6 per cent in 2019 to 57.4 per cent in 2021, before dropping to 51.3 per cent in 2022. This time, there were two candidates, including one belonging to the OBC-NCL category, from the state in the list of top 50.
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The Tamil Nadu assembly had in September last year passed a Bill seeking to exempt the medical aspirants from the state from NEET to ensure “social justice, uphold equality and equal opportunity, protect all vulnerable student communities from being discriminated (against)”.
The Bill was introduced based on the recommendations of a high-level committee led by retired judge AK Rajan. In the recent years, the state has recorded many cases where medical aspirants, who died by suicide, left behind notes blaming NEET.
On Thursday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met the family of one such aspirant in the state who allegedly took her life after failing to clear the entrance.
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