CHENNAI: DMK President M K Stalin on Friday urged PM Narendra Modi to promulgate an ordinance to amend Section 14 of the NMC Act, 2019, to exempt NEET for the 2026-27 academic year.
The Centre should also allow state governments to admit students based on marks obtained in the qualifying examination, he said.
Since Parliament is not in session, the Centre could promulgate an ordinance under Article 123 of the Constitution of India amending Section 14 of the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, to dispense with the requirement of NEET and instead allow the union and states to make admissions to medical and dental colleges on the basis of marks obtained in qualifying examinations, he said.
Such an ordinance would provide immediate relief to lakhs of students facing uncertainty and mental trauma, and reduce the burden of reappearing for a compromised examination.
"This request is made entirely without prejudice to the longstanding and principled demand for the complete abolition of NEET and restoration of state autonomy in medical admissions," the former Tamil Nadu CM said in his letter addressed to the PM.
He urged the Centre to immediately intervene and provide relief to students affected by the cancellation of NEET-UG 2026, and ensure that no student loses an academic year due to "institutional failures".
The DMK chief expressed "deep concern and urgency over repeated failures, systemic vulnerabilities, and growing public distrust" surrounding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, particularly in light of the cancellation of NEET-UG 2026 following a reported nationwide paper leak.
"The cancellation of NEET-UG 2026 has once again exposed the structural flaws inherent in a highly centralised examination system," Stalin said in the letter.
The examination, conducted on May 3, was cancelled after a "guess paper" containing over 400 questions, including substantial overlaps exceeding 120 questions in Biology and Chemistry, reportedly circulated widely across WhatsApp and Telegram groups before the examination, he said.
Reports said the leak originated in Nashik, Maharashtra, spread through Haryana, was printed and distributed in Rajasthan districts including Sikar, Jaipur, and Jamwa Ramgarh, and eventually reached candidates in Bihar, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, and several other states.
A multi-state network involving at least 45 individuals was uncovered, leading to arrests and a CBI investigation. Nearly 22.8 lakh students were thrown into uncertainty, with lakhs of honest aspirants once again allegedly being affected by institutional failures, the DMK president said in the letter.
"Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. The history of NEET and its predecessor examinations reveals a disturbing and consistent pattern of irregularities. In 2015, the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), the predecessor to NEET, witnessed a massive paper leak facilitated through Bluetooth-enabled cheating devices and organised rackets," he pointed out.
Following this, the Supreme Court was compelled to cancel the entire examination, affecting nearly six lakh students, and a re-examination had to be conducted.
He listed a series of alleged irregularities, controversies, impersonation cases, and cheating rackets leading to multiple arrests by the CBI in connection with the conduct of the test in 2016, 2017, 2020–21, 2022, and said the 2024 NEET-UG examination became one of the most controversial entrance examinations in recent memory.
Allegations of paper leaks in Bihar, Patna, and Hazaribagh; reports of burnt question papers; unusually high numbers of perfect scores; arbitrary grace marks; suspicious clustering of toppers at select centres; and allegations of candidates paying between Rs 30 lakh and Rs 50 lakh to access leaked papers triggered nationwide protests, he added.
At least 155 students were found to have directly benefited from the leaks. Several private centres in Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Gujarat came under scrutiny for alleged irregularities, prompting CBI investigations.
Compounding the crisis are persistent problems with exam centre allocation and infrastructural deficiencies. Students from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka have repeatedly been allotted centres in distant states such as Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, forcing economically weaker families to bear significant travel and accommodation expense.
Many centres reportedly lacked adequate infrastructure, including poor lighting and ventilation, delays in biometric verification, a shortage of invigilators, broken furniture, and loss of examination time during OMR distribution. The burden of these failures falls disproportionately on poor and rural students.
He argued that since its inception, NEET has systematically disadvantaged students from poor, rural, government-school, Tamil-medium, and socially marginalised backgrounds.
While the examination was projected as a mechanism to ensure merit and transparency, the reality, he said, has been starkly different.
"NEET has effectively transformed medical admissions into a highly commercialised, coaching-centre-driven process in which economic privilege increasingly determines success rather than genuine academic capability or social commitment," Stalin claimed.