Parents urge Telangana govt to review GO 33 as students lose local status

GO 33 issued by the Telangana government has denied MBBS aspirants from border districts local status in NEET admissions, as they studied Intermediate in Andhra Pradesh. Parents allege injustice and urge humanitarian consideration for affected students

Khammam: The Congress government’s GO No. 33 has put the aspirations of scores of candidates from the district seeking MBBS admission in the current academic year after qualifying in NEET in limbo.

The GO specifies students should have studied classes 9, 10 and Intermediate in Telangana to qualify for local status criteria for admission into MBBS course under the Competent Authority Quota (CAQ). This has stripped local status from the students in question as they pursued Intermediate in Andhra Pradesh.

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Parents of the students are running from pillar to post to get the issue resolved but there is none to care about their grievances. Speaking to ‘Telangana Today’, a parent S Venugopal of Aswaraopet in Kothagudem said that his daughter had completed SSC in Telangana and was sent to Vijayawada in AP for Intermediate course as Hyderabad was a bit far from their place.

“We were born in Telangana, grew up here and have been living here for the last 40 to 50 years. We have Telangana Aadhaar cards, ration cards and voter cards. To ensure better education, we sent our children to Vijayawada,” he said.

But GO 33, dated July 19, 2024, was implemented without any prior information, thus the students are deprived of their local status meting out injustice to them, Venugopal said, adding that his daughter completed her Intermediate before the GO was issued and same was the case with many students.

As the students are neither locals in AP nor in Telangana, they are facing a lot of stress and mental anguish. According to Venugopal, there are around 40 students from border districts facing such problems due to GO No. 33. The government should consider such students as locals on humanitarian basis and allow them to participate in the NEET counselling, he said.

Meanwhile, the dilemma being faced by a student, G Sai Ritika, of Bhadrachalam is even stranger. She finished her schooling in St Ann’s High School at Purushothapatnam, which was once part of Telangana and now merged with AP. She completed Intermediate in Hyderabad.

But since she did her schooling in AP, she was categorised as ‘non-local’ in the Telangana medical counselling process. Her father, Ashok Kumar, who runs a business in Bhadrachalam, lamented that they lived in Bhadrachalam for over 40 years and his daughter was born and brought up here, yet she was not considered a local.