Prime Minister Narendra Modi has finally acknowledged that there was a “grave sin” committed in connection with the conduct of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Neet) for medical admissions this year. The Prime Minister’s comment has arrived two-and-a-half months after the cancellation of the examination held on May 3 this year.
Thus, the voices of the youth of the country who are on the streets demanding the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the debacle for it had been who had presided over not one slip but a series of them, pushing them into untold misery, have not gone completely unheard. The students want the government to display some accountability on the part of the minister and itself.
Yet it still appears that these voices are being lost in the babel of politics. The students themselves are being treated harshly on the capital’s streets by the police instead. A government that thrashes teenagers who are articulating a legitimate cause holding copies of the Constitution in their hands by no means gives them the right message. Mr Modi will be wrong in saying that the question paper leak is a sin for it’s also nothing short of a crime on his watch, for which he must make amends. The Prime Minister has suggested that it is not a political issue but a national one, and he is right there. But it was not beyond his power to control as a natural disaster is and it happened only because the agency the government had created for holding the examinations had been infected with rot that escaped its notice. The government cannot wash its hands of the matter by generalising it.
It is time the Prime Minister asks his education minister to vacate his seat and places someone with a sense of responsibility there. Democracy calls for the right action at the right time. Justice must be dispensed to all those children who died by suicide unable to stand the pressure of the cancellation and it must be dispensed without delay. The Prime Minister’s words have no meaning unless accompanied by appropriate action.
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