The Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court that the grace marks of 1563 students who appeared for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate 2024 (NEET-UG 2024) will be cancelled and they will have the option to reappear for the exam. The court, after hearing the Centre’s decision, said that a re-exam will be conducted for the 1,563 students.
“A subsequent Committee has made recommendations after deliberations which are placed before us. According to recommendation, scorecards of 1563 candidates will be cancelled and stand withdrawn. A re-exam will be conducted for these 1563 candidates. The results of those who don’t wish to appear will be based on their actual marks without compensatory marks,” the Vacation Bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said.
“For those who appear for re-test, the May 5 scores will be discarded,” the court added.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) stated that re-test will be notified on Thursday itself and it is likely to be held on June 23. The results of the re-exam should be out before June 30 to ensure that the counselling scheduled for July 6 is unaffected.
Speaking on the issue, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said action will be taken against the culprits in the entire NEET results mess. “The government had put forward its stand before the SC today. It’s about 1,500 students. The government is taking this issue seriously,” he said.
Petitioner and CEO of Physics Wallah Alakh Pandey said that the recent mess has created a trust issue with the NTA. “Today, NTA accepted in front of the Supreme Court that the grace marks given to the students were wrong and they agree that this created dissatisfaction among the students and they agreed that they will remove the grace marks. Re-examination of those 1,563 students who got grace marks will be done on 23rd June or the original score without grace marks would be accepted by the students. NTA agreed in front of the SC that the grace marks they awarded were wrong. The question is if the NTA has other discrepancies that we are unaware of. So, there is a trust issue with NTA. The issue of paper leak is open and hearing on that will continue,” Pandey said.