Supreme Court: While hearing petitions seeking the cancellation of the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for the Under-Graduate (UG) 2024 over an alleged paper leak, irregularities and grant of grace marks over alleged ‘loss of time’, a vacation Division Bench of Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, JJ., noted the Centre’s stand that grace marks given to 1563 candidates for loss of time will be cancelled and option for retest will be granted only to those students who were granted the grace marks.
1563 candidates were granted grace marks using normalisation formula since candidates were not given 3 hrs 20 min time but got lesser time.
The Centre submitted that the students will be informed of their actual scores (without grace marks) and given an option to appear for a re-examination. It was also submitted that the re-examination will likely take place on 23-06-2024 and results will be published before 30-06-2024, so that the counselling is not affected by the same.
In Shivangi Mishra v. National Testing Agency1, on 11-06-2024, a notice was issued to the Centre and sought a response from the National Testing Agency (‘NTA’). A stay on the counselling for admissions to the medical colleges was refused. The matter was tagged along with Vanshika Yadav v. Union of India.2
The petition was filed seeking direction to the NTA to conduct the exam again in view of the allegations of the paper leak. It was alleged that when the result was declared, many candidates scored perfect scores. In several media reports, it was reported that 67 students scored a perfect score of 720.
Earlier, while considering another petition seeking similar reliefs, the Court, vide order dated 17-05-2024 refused to stay the declaration of the results of the NEET-UG exam. However, notice was issued, and the matter was listed for a hearing on 08-07-2024.
Source: Press
1. Writ Petition (Civil) No. 362/2024.
2. Writ Petition (Civil) No. 335/2024.
