NEET UG Row: Supreme Court seeks NTA’s response, says ‘sanctity has been affected, so we need answers’

Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, appearing for the petitioners’ side, requested the bench to stay the counselling process. However, the apex court refused it. “Let the counselling start, we are not stopping the counselling,” the bench remarked.

NEET UG case hearing is on July 8.

The top court also refused to stay the counselling process for admissions in MBBS, and other courses for successful candidates. The petition was heard by a vacation bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah.

The alleged paper leak was violative of Article 14 (right to equality) under the Constitution as it gave an undue advantage to some candidates over others who chose to attempt the examination in a fair manner, it said.

The plea seeking cancellation of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) UG was filed by Shivangi Mishra and nine other petitioners on June 1. The NEET result was released on June 4 and since then, it’s been in the news for multiple reasons including the grace marks policy.

After the declaration of the results, a few more petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court questioning the decision of the National Testing Agency to award grace marks to several candidates. These petitions will be heard later.

Apart from NEET aspirants, coaching institutes, parents and student bodies like All India Students’ Association (AISA) and Students’ Federation of India (SFI), protested against the NEET exam on Monday.

Opposition leaders Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been condemning the Modi government over irregularities in the results of NEET, and assured students that they would raise the issue in Parliament.

Meanwhile, the NTA, which conducts the NEET, last week said the education ministry has set up a four-member panel to review the grace marks awarded to more than 1,500 candidates.

The Indian Express last week reported that out of the 67 candidates who got a perfect score in the NEET-UG results, as many as 44 made it to the top because, ironically, they got an answer to a basic physics question wrong – and received “grace marks” for that.

— with inputs from PTI, ANI