Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has on Monday unveiled a major announcement that had made the students in the state happy in chasing their dreams. The Chief Minister has announced that the state government will bear the education expenses of the government school students who join and pursue engineering courses under the 7.5% reservation quota. 

MK Stalin had made this announcement while addressing an event organized by the higher education department in Chennai on Monday. Besides the Chief Minister, the event had the presence of Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister K Ponmudi, School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi, Health Minister Ma Subramanian, Chief Secretary Irai Anbu, and other senior officials. As per the announcement, the education expenses that will be taken care of by the government will include counselling, hostel, and college fees of the students who joined the engineering courses under the 7.5% horizontal reservation. 

As part of the announcement, the Chief Minister had handed over the admission orders for fifty government school students under the reservation slab. Speaking at the event, the Chief Minister said that about 10,000 government school students will be benefitted due to the horizontal reservation in the current academic year. MK Stalin has said that this measure of providing free education to the government school students in engineering was taken by the government to fulfil the dreams of students in pursuing engineering courses in top universities. 

He stated that several government school students were doubtful of securing engineering seats and this measure will fulfil their dreams. MK Stalin affirmed that the DMK government's motive is to get every student educated and support them in securing a job based on their qualification. He outlined that students studying in government schools in rural areas should be able to pursue higher education at top institutions and the DMK government had implemented several schemes in this regard while it was in power. 

Reminiscing his father and late DMK President M Karunanidhi's citation, MK Stalin said M Karunanidhi had expressed that the government school students who are studying in rural areas are enduring great difficulty in clearing entrance exams for joining the medical and engineering courses and the Chief Minister added that it was due to this reason that the government had taken steps to repeal NEET to preserve social justice.

Furthermore, MK Stalin noted that currently, 69% of students studying in government schools are from rural areas and through this 7.5% horizontal reservation, more students can join medical, law, and engineering courses and students of government and government-aided schools from classes 6 to 12 will get benefitted due to reservation. These 50 government school students, for whom the admission orders were issued on Monday, would join Anna University. "This will lead their families, besides benefitting the state and I am proud of issuing these admission orders", MK Stalin added. 

Aiming to create a golden period: 

MK Stalin has instructed the officials of departments of school education and higher education to establish a foundation for developing the Tamil society across all the sectors. He said that the present government's tenure should become a golden period for higher education, professional education, and research. He said, "It will make me happy if any one of the students benefitting through this reservation comes and tells me years later that he/she is working in a big company or has established a new business due to this government order."