SC Says ‘NEET Sancity Affected’, NTA Committee Considers Retest for 1563 Candidates

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NEET UG 2024 result protest continues. SC directs the Center and NTA to respond to the student's petition. Further, judges have allowed the authorities to conduct the counselling process as per MCC’s schedule.

NEET UG Controversy Continues; SC Seeks Center and NTA’s Response

New Delhi: Several petitions were filed in various courts, including in SC, challenging the NEET UG 2024 result. In a hearing, the Supreme Court has asked NTA to respond to the petitions. While the counselling will be held as per schedule, the court will conduct the next hearing on July 08, 2024.

As a result of various petitions filed against NEET UG Results 2024, the NTA four-member committee discussed the option to conduct a retest for 1,563 candidates who received "grace marks" due to time loss during the exam.

The four-member committee, led by the former UPSC Chairman, held multiple sessions to address the NEET 2024 controversy. They discussed various measures to help the affected candidates. A few of them proposed re-testing the exam. However, the decision of the committee remains undisclosed.

The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (UG) 2024 result was released on June 4, 2024, instead of June 14, 2024. This year, 67 students scored full marks, creating widespread controversies.

Supreme Court Says 'Sanctity of Exam Has Been Affected', Next Hearing on July 08

Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah, part of a two-judge bench, expressed, “It’s not so simple that because you have done it (conducted the exam), it’s sacrosanct. We need answers for that… The sanctity has been affected. So we need answers.” The Supreme Court asked the Center and NTA to respond to petitions.

However, the panel headed by Justice Vikram Nath decided not to stop the counselling process. Instead, they decided to hear the petition on July 8. Justice Nath said “Let the counselling start. We are not stopping the counselling.”

As per the source, “Although this is not the final decision, many members are leaning towards the option of asking these candidates to either accept their raw score (pre-normalization) score or sit for a retest. The majority of the 1,500 candidates scored less than 300 out of 720 marks even after normalization. It was felt they may not come forward for the retest even if offered as an option. For the remaining numbers, it will not be too difficult to conduct the exam again.”

Although the detailed counselling schedule has not yet been declared after the decision of the Hon’ble SC, the NEET counselling will commence soon.

NEET UG 2024 Fallout

In six test centers, about 1563 students observed a huge disparity in their results. Two were in Chhattisgarh (one each in Balod and Dantewada), one each in Meghalaya, Surat, Haryana’s Bahadurgarh and Chandigarh.

After reviewing video footage, the NTA determined that candidates across the six centers had lost up to 40 minutes. They then compensated these candidates appropriately with grace marks, applying a normalization formula from a 2018 Supreme Court judgment related to a similar incident in CLAT. The NEET-UG paper has a duration of 200 minutes.

Following the announcement of the NEET-UG results, there were widespread protests. This led to the NTA and the Ministry of Education forming a committee to review the results of at least 1,563 candidates.

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