By Express News Service

Tamil Nadu was always known for its strong opposition for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for MBBS admissions. But the recently released results of PG NEET shows that the southern State has the maximum number of candidates qualifying in the NEET for postgraduate admissions.

A total of 11,121 students, from Tamil Nadu cleared the Post Graduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test 2019. A total of 17,067 students from the State appeared for the test, which is the highest among the states and followed by Maharashtra with 15451 candidates who took the test.

Results declared by the National Board of Education (NBE) show that the State has not only yielded the maximum number of students who scored above the cut-off, but 14 per cent of all students who cleared the exam are from Tamil Nadu. The cut-off according to the official release is 340 marks out of 1200 for unreserved category candidates. For SC/ST/OBC category candidates, the cut-off marks are 295.

NEET PG was conducted on January 6 and a total of 1,48,000 candidates appeared for the exam. The results also show that only a third of students from the State who wrote the test did not qualify. Six other States had a higher qualification rate than Tamil Nadu. This includes Chandigarh (81.58%), Goa (76.50%), Delhi (75.70%), Kerala (75.13%), Meghalaya (71.11%) and Jammu and Kashmir (69.83%).

However, these states had lesser participation in comparison to Tamil Nadu. Even as 65.16 per cent of students from the State, who took the test qualified, it does not guarantee an admission into a PG seat. The merit position for All India 50 per cent quota seats will be declared separately. But, it certainly increases the chances of students from the State obtaining government seats both within Tamil Nadu and in other States.