The Tribal Affairs Department (TAD) of Jammu and Kashmir has launched the first of its kind initiative for coaching of meritorious and deserving tribal students preparing for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)/ JEE for undergraduate professional courses, officials said on Tuesday.

The course fee will be sponsored by the department. Candidates qualifying the examination for selection in professional courses after coaching will also be provided scholarship.

Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, secretary, Tribal Affairs department, informed that in first year of the scheme 100 tribal students are being selected for NEET coaching in Government empanelled coaching institutes, under two different sub-schemes,”Host-50″ for hostellers and “Top-50″ for other tribal meritorious students. The schemes are being implemented through the Education wing of the Tribal Research Institute.

The coaching fee for NEET at the select institutions will be sponsored by the department after verification of attendance and evaluation. Further, the candidates selected for courses like MBBS, BVSc&AH, BDS, BAMS, BE, BTech and other professional courses of NEET shall be provided an annual scholarship of Rs 70,000-75,000 totalling around Rs 4 lakh for various professional courses.

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Deputy Director (Adm), TRI J&K, Dr Abdul Khabir while giving the details of scheme said under “Top-50″, applications have been invited from meritorious tribal students and 50 students with highest marks, above 80 per cent in Class-XII board examination will be selected for coaching while under the “Host-50,” the students enrolled in hostels will be selected through a screening test.

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The department has notified 50 per cent reservation for girl students under hostel category while 25 per cent seats are reserved for girl students in Top-50 scheme for NEET.

There is no income bar under the coaching scheme. The coaching will be offered at empanelled institutes at Jammu and Srinagar wherein coaching fee notified by the government will be sponsored by the department for the selected students. A waiting list will also be maintained. Only online applications before the cut-off date will be considered by the department for selection of students.

Source: IANS