Delhi HC sets aside order awarding grace marks to NEET candidates: ‘Would open floodgates’

Two candidates had moved court, seeking that they be compensated as they lost time during the exam, owing to “acts of omission and commission by personnel deployed at the examination venue” due to the failure of biometric verification”. As a result, there was a delay in authentication, they said.

The aspirants had also highlighted that they were interrupted while writing the exam to undergo Aadhaar verification once again.

In an order dated July 28, Justice Vikas Mahajan had directed that the students be awarded grace marks by applying the formula laid down in a Supreme Court judgment. The court had also ordered that the students be assigned a supernumerary rank to ensure their revised ranking does not affect the positions of other candidates.

The single judge’s order was challenged by NTA before the HC division bench.

On Wednesday, the bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Sachin Datta set aside the single judge’s order. The bench took into account that the candidates had not strictly adhered to the reporting time at their exam centre — 11 am. It also said a report from the technical agency (Innovatiview India Limited) indicated that the difficulty in biometric authentication of the two aspirants was on account of “biometrics locked by the Aadhaar Holder”.

Noting that there is merit in the NTA’s assertion that “the difficulty in biometric authentication of the candidates concerned in the present cases was attributable to the conduct of the examinees concerned themselves”, the court also observed that granting grace marks will “open floodgates” to claims by candidates who experience even minor delays in biometric authentication.

“.. a larger issue that concerns the Court viz. the chaotic consequences of extending ‘marks improvisation’ for individual delays in biometric authentication for reasons not attributable to the testing agency. Such an approach would open the floodgates to claims by candidates who experienced even minor technical delays in biometric authentication… Any such delay, besides being not attributable to the appellant, is not scientifically measurable, the bench reasoned.
Noting that the single judge had arrived at the loss of time caused to the candidates through CCTV footage as the exam itself was on pen-paper OMR, and not a computer based test, the bench recorded, “The entire process of scrutinising unverifiable claims based on visual perusal and extrapolation from CCTV coverage, and seeking to translate the same into ‘improvisation marks’, is an exercise that is inherently subjective.”

It further said, “Undoubtedly, the same would undermine the finality and legitimacy of the results of the examination… Moreover, biometric verifications are part of the mandatory security process, which ensures the integrity of the examination by preventing impersonation. Granting marks for delays in the process of biometric verification, that too for no fault of the appellant, would not be a justifiable course to follow…”

The bench said at this stage, “it would be imprudent to seek to ‘calculate’ the extent of time lost in individual cases through visual impression gathered by perusing CCTV coverage, and then proceeding to work out ‘improvisation/grace marks’”.

The bench also held that “the concept of ‘supernumerary rank’ has no basis in the extant examination regulations” and it “alters the inter-se merit between candidates”, which may further affect cut-off thresholds.