PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss has called for an urgent review and the abolition of NEET, citing official admission data showing that only 5 percent of government school students admitted to MBBS courses under Tamil Nadu’s 7.5 percent horizontal reservation cleared the exam on their first attempt.
In a statement issued in Chennai on Saturday, the former Union health minister said recent reports on the number of attempts taken by students admitted to government and private medical colleges in the state raise serious questions about whether the entrance test has fulfilled its stated objective. He argued that if more than 95 percent of medical aspirants must write NEET multiple times to secure a seat, the effectiveness of the system warrants critical scrutiny.
Breakdown of 2025–26 admissions
Citing government data for the 2025–26 academic year, Ramadoss said that of 650 government school students admitted under the 7.5 percent quota across government and private medical colleges, only 33 — 5 percent — qualified in their first attempt. The remaining 617 students secured seats after repeated attempts: 235 succeeded on their second attempt, 283 on their third, 91 on their fourth, six on their fifth and two after six or more attempts.
He said a similar pattern held across other admission categories. Among the 8,053 students admitted under the remaining 92.5 percent government quota seats in government and private colleges, only 1,613 cleared the test on their first try, while 6,440 took between two and six or more attempts.
Reservation rationale and the cost burden
The 7.5 percent reservation was originally introduced because government school students could not afford expensive private coaching, he noted. With about 95 percent of these students now undergoing two to six years of additional preparation, even economically disadvantaged families are being forced into debt to fund special coaching classes, which he described as “stark evidence of the commercialisation of medical education.”
Ramadoss recalled that when NEET was announced in 2010 and made mandatory in 2017, the Union government maintained that it would curb commercialisation and improve the quality of medical education.
