The family of S Anitha, the 17-year-old medical aspirant who killed herself last week, refused to take a cheque for Rs 7 lakh from the Tamil Nadu government on Monday, NDTV reported.
Anitha hanged herself on Friday, allegedly after failing to secure a medical seat through the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test. She had challenged the applicability of the entrance test, the deciding factor in admissions to undergraduate medical and dentistry colleges, in the Supreme Court.
“Anitha died to get exemption from Neet and not for any government aid,” her brother Mani Ratnam told NDTV on Monday, after G Laxmi Priya, the district collector of Ariyalur visited them to hand over the cheque.
Anitha had scored 1,176 out of 1,200 in her Class 12 examinations under the Tamil Nadu state board – a score that would have easily got her into a government medical college. But, last month the Supreme Court had ordered that admissions in Tamil Nadu would also be based on Neet and not the Class 12 results.
Anitha had pleaded before the Supreme Court that poor students who lived in villages could not afford the private coaching classes that students in cities could. Students from state boards have resisted the national exam conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education, alleging it is based on the central board’s syllabus, which is vastly different from theirs.
There have been protests across Tamil Nadu since Friday, while activists and political rivals have accused both the E Palaniswami government in the state and the Bharatiya Janata Party government at the Centre of letting down the students.
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