There has been an 87% fall in Tamil-medium students’ share of MBBS seats via NEET.
“There has been an 87% fall in Tamil-medium students’ share of MBBS seats via NEET.”Rahul Gandhi, Chhatron Ki Goonj rally, Chennai, 10 October 2026
Rated False
The facts
Tamil Nadu’s own A.K. Rajan Committee reported a decline from 14.44% to 1.7% in government medical college admissions. But it also recorded a 24.8% fall in Tamil-medium students enrolled in the state board’s Class 12.235
If Tamil-medium enrolment itself is falling, why blame NEET alone?
Last we checked, Tamil Nadu’s state government was run by the DMK for the last five years, and is now run by the TVK and the Congress.236
So whose record on school-level access and educational outcomes should we check?
You cannot pin the entire problem on an entrance exam while ignoring the pipeline of students reaching it.237
The Governor and the Modi government signed off on further empowering Tamil medical students by providing a special NEET quota for government-school students, a move proposed by the then AIADMK government.
Tamil Nadu’s 7.5% preferential quota for eligible government-school students was introduced in 2020, with the Governor granting assent to the State’s Bill. It enabled these students to secure 336 MBBS seats in its first year.238