The Supreme Court will hear three petitions today seeking the cancellation of the NEET UG 2024 and the conduct of a retest due to alleged irregularities in the grant of grace marks. A vacation bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta will take up the petitions. The petitioners also seek a stay on the counselling process.
Among these petitions is one filed by Alakh Pandey, the founder of Physics Wallah, who claimed that the NTA's decision to award grace marks was "arbitrary". Pandey collected representations from about 20,000 students, showing that 70-80 marks were randomly awarded as grace marks to at least 1,500 students.
Alakh Pandey's petition is against the alleged random awarding of grace marks by the National Testing Agency (NTA) to over 1,500 candidates..
Pandey has requested the Supreme Court to establish an expert panel under its supervision to "inquire into the examination process and results of NEET (UG) 2024.”
The second petition was filed by SIO members Abdullah Mohammed Faiz and Dr. Shaik Roshan Mohiddin, seeking to recall the NEET-UG 2024 results and conduct a fresh exam. The petitioners alleged arbitrariness in the granting of grace marks, pointing out that marks as high as 718 and 719 out of 720, secured by several students, were “statistically impossible.” They claimed that the NTA's grant of grace marks was a malafide exercise to provide “backdoor entry” to certain students, rather than compensating for "lost time." The petitioners also raised suspicions about the fact that 67 students from one particular center obtained full 720 marks.
In this petition, the petitioners also sought a stay on the counselling for NEET-UG 2024 admissions until an investigation into allegations of a paper leak was completed. They further requested the constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the alleged malpractices in the conduct of the exam.
The third petition was filed by NEET candidate Jaripiti Kartheek, challenging the award of grace marks as compensation for the alleged loss of time during the exam. He argued that the "normalization formula" for awarding grace marks should only apply to the number of questions left unanswered in proportion to the lost time, given that each question has equal weightage and assumes equal time distribution for answering each question.
On Wednesday, the National Testing Agency (NTA) informed the Delhi High Court that it will seek to transfer all matters related to alleged irregularities in the NEET UG 2024 results to the Supreme Court.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the Delhi High Court bench, presided over by Justice Neena Bansal Krishna, that the NTA will file a transfer petition before the Supreme Court to consolidate and schedule all related cases for a joint hearing.
Mehta stated that following the NEET-UG exam results, several petitions have been filed across various High Courts in the country. To ensure consistency and avoid conflicting judgments, the NTA will request the Supreme Court to hear all such matters together.
Notably, the NTA conducted the NEET examination on May 5 across 4,750 centers and was taken by around 24 lakh candidates. Although the results were expected to be declared on June 14, they were announced earlier on June 4, as the evaluation of the answer sheets was completed ahead of schedule. Allegations of a question paper leak and the granting of grace marks to over 1,500 medical aspirants have sparked protests and led to the filing of cases in high courts as well as the Supreme Court.
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