CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government may reserve 85% of MBBSBDS seats for state board students, after ranking them according to their National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test ( NEET ) 2017 scores, if it fails to the get an exemption for the state from the common entrance exam.

Soon after the NEET results were declared by the Central Board of Secondary Education on Friday, state health department officials headed by secretary J Radhakrishnan met chief secretary Girija Vaidyanathan. “Medical admissions in the state will be completely based on NEET rank. However, after surrendering 15% for all-India quota, we want to reserve 85% of the remaining seats for state board students,“ said a senior official.

Of the TN students who studied biology, which is mandatory for writing NEET, in Class XII, 3.46 lakh students were from the state board and 4,675 students belonged to the CBSE stream. “Of the 80,000 TN students who wrote NEET, at least 90% were from the state board. However, 50% of the questions asked in NEET were out-of-state syllabus for the state board students,“ the official said.

Counselling for medical admissions may start on July 17. Applications are likely to be be sold from Tuesday. The state wants to reserve 85% for state board stu dents this year, and lower the percentage for state board students in a phased manner, after the school education department introduces revised syllabus from Class 9.

Legal experts said the state has to notify its admission policy early next week before it begins sale of prospectus and application forms for medical and dental admissions. The counselling is likely to begin in the third week of July after the Centre completes counselling for seats in the all India quota. This year, for the first time, the state will conduct counselling for 24 government medical colleges as well as an almost equal number of seats in self-financing colleges and deemed universities.

Tamil Nadu, which scrapped entrance examinations for professional courses more than a decade ago, has been opposing a common entrance examination for MBBS BDS admissions. The state health minister C Vijaya Bhaskar tabled two Bills in the assembly to exempt the state from NEET for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses even after the Supreme Court made NEET mandatory in April 2016.The Act, however, is yet to be sent by the Centre for the presidential assent.

The state selection committee, which is in-charge of all medical and dental admissions, has already submitted the draft of the prospectus with three options including admission based on class 12 marks and reservation for state students. “We have also readied the option to do admissions completely based on NEET. It will be issued once the government makes a final decision,“ said director of medical education Dr A Edwin Joe.

But this year, the counselling schedule is also likely to be crowded and the selection committee may have to deploy additional staff to conduct counselling for PG medical admissions simultaneously if SC upholds the high court order directing the state to reconfigure the merit list for PG admissions. “We may have to repeat the entire PG counselling for government colleges, self-financing colleges and deemed universities. Almost simultaneously, we have to conduct counselling for undergrads,“ said a senior official.

