In what may come as a relief to tribal students from Meghalaya who denied the NEET-UG retest, the Supreme Court today issued notice on a plea filed by them seeking directions to the National Testing Agency (NTA) to permit them to appear in the retest since they had also suffered loss of time in taking the examination held on May 5.
It may be noted that ten NEET aspirants from Meghalaya moved the Supreme Court demanding a retest amid allegations of discrepancies during the recent examinations. These students are seeking inclusion in the group of 1563 candidates who were granted grace marks and offered the opportunity to reappear for the retest on June 23.
“Issue notice. Tag (with the pending batch of petitions). In the meantime, learned counsel appearing for respondents NTA and Union of India may file their response within two weeks. The other respondents may also file their response on or before the next date fixed,” a Supreme Court vacation bench of Justices Vikram Nath and S V N Bhatti said in an order passed today.
Further, the Supreme Court has scheduled the hearing of the petition filed by Meghalaya students on July 8.
Yoothica Pallavi, a lawyer who appeared on behalf of the ten Meghalaya students, in her writ petition before the Supreme Court said that they were similarly placed as 1,563 students who were allowed to take retest on June 23.
Palavi also stated that the ten students appeared at test centres of Meghalaya and lost 40-45 minutes of time.
She also said that the petitioners have not been included in the proposed retest even though they have suffered on account act and omission on the part of NTA.
“It is submitted that the petitioners were denied allocated time of 3 hours and 20 minutes inasmuch as a lot of time was wasted due to supply of wrong question papers and contradictory instructions given to the students by the examiners,” Pallavi added.
According to the lawyer, due to lack of clarity as to which question paper was to be answered and as a result of such confusion and contradictory instructions, the ten Meghalaya students were denied almost 40-45 minutes on average of the allocated time period for attempting the question papers.
Further, Pallavi in her writ petition alleged that petitioners were arbitrarily denied the opportunity to appear in the fresh examination even though they are similarly placed as 1,563 students as the petitioners were deprived of their allocated time to attempt the examination.
She also sought an opportunity for the students to appear in the June 23 retest or fresh examination on any other suitable date.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also today stayed the proceedings pending before various High Courts of the country pertaining to the alleged NEET-UG paper leak.
Issuing a notice on transfer petitions filed by the NTA, the vacation bench of the Supreme Court ordered a stay on proceedings pending before different High Courts till the next date of listing.
