The National Testing Agency (NTA) will re-conduct the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, Undergraduate (NEET UG) 2024 exam for over 1563 aspirants on June 23.
As reported by The Indian Express earlier, the affected candidates will now be given two options — either to accept the score that they were originally awarded, without the grace marks, or re-appear for the exam on June 23. “The exam will be conducted in the same six cities but different centres,” a senior NTA official told indianexpress.com.
The same was also announced by NTA today in a Supreme Court hearing.
NTA and the Union Education Ministry formed a committee on Saturday to review the normalisation policy that was adopted for over 1,563 candidates who were awarded “grace marks” to compensate for the “loss of time” suffered while appearing for this year’s NEET UG. The committee comprised of one member from MoHFW, one from NIOS and two UPSC members. The affected candidates were from six centres — two in Chhattisgarh (one each in Balod and Dantewada), one each in Meghalaya, Surat, Haryana’s Bahadurgarh, and Chandigarh.
NTA had also added that the special committee will also look into similar complaints raised by students till June 4.
What is the normalisation process?
This committee, which was led by a former UPSC Chairman and three academicians, has now decided that the NTA will have to re-conduct NEET UG exam for a total of 1563 students who were given grace marks on the basis of a normalisation formula picked by NTA from a 2018 Supreme Court judgment regarding a similar incident in CLAT.
The normalisation formula adopted in the CLAT 2018 exam adjusted the candidate’s score based on the time lost and the answering efficiency.
The NTA, too, has followed the same process and 1563 candidates were compensated for the loss of time. As per NTA, the revised marks of such candidates vary from -20 to 720 marks. Amongst these, the score of two candidates also happens to be 718 and 719 marks respectively due to the compensatory marks.
NTA usually uses normalised scores for a few other entrance exams such as JEE Main and CUET where the exam is held on different days. However in such cases, the normalisation formula is provided for the public eye beforehand – a practice that has never been adopted for NEET UG since it is conducted on the same day for each candidate. However, the NTA has now said that it will try to add this point in the future information bulletins of NEET UG too.
The announcement came a little after students, teachers, and various opposition parties such as Congress, AAP, DMK and the Maharashtra government demanded a retest and a Supreme Court-monitored investigation into the alleged paper leak and discrepancies highlighted by students on social media.
Easy paper, several factors behind inflated number of toppers
Announced on June 4, the results drew attention for the inflated number of students scoring perfect marks (720/720), a ten day advanced result declaration, alleged paper leak and some students being awarded grace marks for loss of time, taking their scores to 718 and 719. All these issues were raised by students and some NEET experts/ tutors on social media immediately after the result declaration.
While the NTA has repeatedly stated that the inflated number of toppers has been due to the increased number of registered students, grace marks due to loss of time and an easy question, NTA Director General Subodh Kumar Singh also attributed the unusually high number of top rankers (67) to a relatively easier paper this year.
This is the first time there have been 67 toppers for NEET UG. Since 2019, there haven’t been more than three toppers in any year of NEET UG, which is the single gateway for admission to all MBBS programs in the country. In 2019 and 2020, there was one topper each. There were three toppers in 2021, one in 2022, and two last year.
17 + 6 + 44 = Record toppers
NTA claims that 17 students were getting a 720/720 score and six students out of the 1,563 candidates were awarded ‘grace marks’ ended up in the top ranks.
In addition to this, a total of 44 other students got crowned with AIR 1 as they got an answer to a physics question wrong – and received “grace marks” for that. As per NTA, a multiple-choice Physics question on atoms had an incorrect statement in an old NCERT book. However, on May 29, NTA released its provisional answer key which showed that Option 1 is correct, and that was challenged by 13,373 students who claimed that NTA’s answer did not match with old NCERT books. The NTA states that the question paper was drafted from the new NCERT book.
This decision saw 44 candidates have their scores boosted from 715 to a perfect 720, making them among the unprecedented number of NEET-UG toppers this year.
Due to these two added scenarios, the total number of toppers increased – 17 students were believed to get AIR 1, to which 6 students were added due to grace marks of time loss and 44 students were then added due to the wrong Physics question.
This year, a record 23.81 lakh students registered for NEET UG, which is an increase from last year’s 20.87 lakh registrations. As per data shared by NTA, a total of 9.96 lakh boys and 13.32 lakh girls and 17 transgender candidates appeared for the exam.
Of the 67 candidates with a perfect 720 score, the majority are from Rajasthan (11), followed by Tamil Nadu (8), Maharashtra (7) and then four each from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.
NTA DG addressing a press conference on June 8. (Express photo) 
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