The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to grant its provisional nod for appearing in counselling of NEET-UG-2025 to two candidates, who faced a power outage in their examination centres in Madhya Pradesh. A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and A S Chandurkar, however, listed petitions of Navya Nayak and S Sai Priya for further hearing on July 25. The candidates have challenged the July 14 order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court refusing to order a re-test for them. The counsel for the petitioners submitted that a notification was issued for the counselling and sought provisional permission to participate in it. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the National Testing Agency, said one of the prayers in both the petitions for a re-test couldn't be allowed as it would affect lakhs of students, who wrote the examination. The bench declined to issue interim directions and deferred the hearing. On July 16, the top court agreed to hear the plea of the candidates who appeared in the examination and suffered a power outage in certain centres. A single judge of the high court directed the National Testing Agency to conduct retest of the NEET-UG-2025 examination for candidates affected by power outage at certain centres in Indore and Ujjain of the state. The division bench of the high court, however, set aside the single judge order on the plea of the National Testing Agency but cautioned against any recurrence in future. It took note of an expert panel report opining that though there was power outage at some centres, there was natural light to enable candidates to write the test.
