The Supreme Court will tomorrow hear the plea by ten NEET-UG aspirants from Meghalaya for inclusion in the group of 1563 candidates who were granted grace marks and offered the opportunity to reappear for the retest held on June 23.
The Supreme Court’s bench presided over by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra will hear the matter along with a batch of petitions about the NEET-UG examination, including its cancellation.
In a preliminary affidavit filed before the top court, the Education Ministry on July 5 opposed the cancellation of the NEET-UG exam, saying that scrapping the entire exam would seriously jeopardise the lakhs of honest candidates who attempted the question paper held on May 5 this year.
Yoothica Pallavi, a lawyer who appeared on behalf of the ten Meghalaya students, in her writ petition before the Supreme Court sought that the students be 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 National Testing Agency (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.
It may be mentioned that around 50 percent of students from Meghalaya appeared at the NEET-UG retest conducted by the NTA on June 23.
The NTA conducted a retest for 1,563 students awarded grace marks in the NEET-UG to make up for time loss at six centres located in Meghalaya, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Haryana. However, 813 appeared for the retest in these six centres.
The retest was held from 2pm to 5:20pm.
In Meghalaya, the retest was held in Tura. Out of 464 students eligible for the retest, 234 took part while 230 were absent.
The retest was conducted after the NTA withdrew grace marks awarded to students who were compensated for loss of time due to delay in the start of the examination at six centres in Meghalaya, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Chandigarh.
The NEET-UG examination was held on May 5, with around 24 lakh candidates appearing for it. The results were announced on June 4.
However, 1,563 candidates complained about the time loss due to delay in the start of the examination as they were distributed the wrong question papers, whereas a few candidates got torn OMR sheets.
Following the order of the Supreme Court to make up for time loss for these candidates, grace marks were awarded to them.
The committee established by the NTA had decided to cancel the scorecards of these 1,563 candidates and offered them the option of a retest as a remedy.
Students who participated in retest will receive revised scores, while those who skipped the retest will retain their original scores, excluding the grace marks.
The NEET-UG examination is conducted by the NTA for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country.
