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The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)-UG 2024Controversy took a new turn on June 13 when the Centre informed the Supreme Court that a decision had been taken to cancel the grace marks awarded to 1563 students.
The move came after a series of petitions were filed challenging the grant of grace marks, which were awarded to compensate for the loss of time faced by students at certain examination centres.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, hearing the petitions, recorded the submission of Advocate Kanu Agarwal, representing the Union Government, that the decision was taken by a panel constituted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on June 12.
Agarwal stated that the panel was of the view that the award of compensatory marks to 1563 students on the grounds of loss of time resulted in a skewed situation, as the grace marks had to be limited only to the unattempted questions.
After examining all aspects, the committee concluded that it would be appropriate to recommend the cancellation of the scorecards of the 1563 students and that they will be informed of their actual marks (without grace marks).
The bench took note of these facts and dictated the following order: The petitioner who had appeared for NEET-UG 2024 has raised a grievance regarding the grant of compensatory marks to 1563 candidates using the normalisation formula where, at the examination centres, the candidates who were not allowed 3 hours 20 minutes time admissible to them were permitted to take their examination for lesser time.
The compensatory marks have been awarded based on the recommendation of a Grievance Redressal Committee relying upon a judgment of this Court in the case of Disha Panchal vs. Union of India and others.
This award of compensatory marks was challenged. The National Testing Agency constituted another committee to reconsider the issue and gave its recommendation on the award of compensatory marks. The subsequent committee held meetings on 10, 11 and 12th June 2024 and has made recommendations which have been placed before us.
According to the recommendations, it has been suggested that the score-cards of the affected 1563 candidates issued on June 4, 2024 will stand cancelled and withdrawn. These affected 1563 candidates will be informed of their actual scores without compensatory marks. Further, re-examination will be conducted for the affected 1563 candidates. The results of the affected candidates who do not wish to appear for the re-examination will be declared on their actual marks without compensation obtained by them in the examination held on May 5, 2024 and the marks obtained by the candidates who will appear in the retest will be considered and their marks based on the examination held on May 5, 2024 will be discarded.
The Court also recorded the submission of Senior Advocate Naresh Kaushik, for the NTA, that the re-test will be notified today itself and will be likely held on June 23. The results of the re-test will be published before June 30 so that the counselling scheduled on July 6 can start.
Recording the stand of the Union and the NTA, the Court disposed of one petition which challenged the grant of grace marks. The Court also issued notice on another petition which alleged paper-leak of the exam and tagged it with similar petitions which are posted on June 8.
Briefly stated, the court was dealing with 3 petitions filed challenging the NEET-UG, 2024 results for widespread irregularities and raising suspicions with regard to the grant of grace marks in the test by the National Testing Agency to over 1500 candidates on the ground of "loss of time".
One of the petitions was filed by Physics Wallah CEO-Alakh Pandey, who claimed that the NTA's decision to award grace marks was "arbitrary". Reportedly, Pandey collected representations from about 20,000 students, showing that about 70-80 marks were randomly awarded as grace marks to at least 1,500 students.
Advocate J Sai Deepak represented the petitioner. The Court closed the issue of grace marks in this petition but kept it pending to consider the other grievances.
The second petition was filed by SIO members Abdullah Mohammed Faiz and Dr. Shaik Roshan Mohiddin, seeking recall of the NEET-UG 2024 results and the conduct of a fresh exam over alleged paper-leak and other malpractices. Notice was issued on this petition today. Advocate on record Shwetank Sailakwal and Advocate Mayank Suryan appeared.
The third petition was filed by NEET candidate-Jaripiti Kartheek, challenging the award of grace marks as compensation for alleged loss of time during the exam. He contended that the “normalization formula” to award grace marks at best could extend only to the number of questions that may be left unanswered in proportion to the loss of time, given that each question has equal mark weightage; therefore equal time distribution to answer each question can be assumed. This petition was disposed of today. Advocate Yelamanjula Balaji appeared in this matter.
Notably, on June 11, the Supreme Court issued notice on another petition filed before the declaration of the NEET-UG results (on June 4), seeking cancellation of the NEET-UG 2024 test over alleged paper leak. Observing that the sanctity of the exam had been affected, the Court sought a response from the NTA on the allegations of paper leak by July 8. However, it turned down the prayer to stay the counselling process.
Previously, on June 8, the NTA and Union Education Ministry announced the formation of a 4-member committee to review the results of over 1,500 candidates who were awarded “grace marks” to compensate for the “loss of time” suffered while appearing for the NEET-UG 2024 exam.