Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday launched a scathing attack on the Centre over the alleged irregularities in NEET and cancellation of UGC-NET saying that paper leaks in the country are happening because the institutions and the education system have been captured by the BJP and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Unless this capture, which has been facilitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is reversed, paper leaks will go on, he added.
Speaking at a press conference, Gandhi said, “All vice-chancellors are selected not on merit but because they are related to the BJP and its parent organisation, the RSS.”
Gandhi, who recently won the Lok Sabha elections from two seats – Raebareli and Wayanad, said the basic concept of Modi has been demolished by the opposition in this general elections, and had it been a prime minister like Atal Bihari Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh, who believed in humility, the government would have survived.
Noting that there are interesting times ahead, he said Modi’s top priority now is to get his Speaker in Parliament and is not bothered about NEET, because of which lakhs of students are suffering.
“We have a government now and a prime minister who will find it very difficult to function. The prime minister is physiologically broken. He has collapsed psychologically. He will struggle to run a government like this,” Gandhi claimed.
“The silence is because the prime minister is crippled. Right now the prime minister’s agenda is the Speaker. He is not bothered about the NEET. He wants that his government should scrape through and he gets his Speaker’s post. That’s where his mind is right now,” he said.
Taking a dig at Modi, Gandhi said, “It was being said Prime Minister Modi stopped the Ukraine-Russia War and Israel-Gaza war, but he is either not able to stop exam paper leaks or doesn’t want to.”
He claimed that during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, students had complained of paper leaks.
“There has been an expansion of idea of Vyapam to rest of country,” he said of the recent controversy while referring to the Vyapam examination and recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh. He added that rules that apply to one paper must also apply to another. “Nothing must be done in an arbitrary way,” Gandhi said.
He also said that the Opposition will raise the exam paper leaks issue in Parliament, asserting it will pressure the government to take action and bring the guilty to book.
A massive controversy has erupted regarding the NEET medical entrance exam due to alleged irregularities, with the matter now with the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday night, the Union education ministry ordered the cancellation of the UGC-NET following inputs that the exam’s integrity may have been compromised, and handed over the matter to the CBI for an investigation.