Vijayawada: A student from Andhra Pradesh has moved the Supreme Court challenging the National Testing Agency’s decision to grant grace marks to 1,563 students “to compensate the ‘loss of time’ they suffered” while appearing for the NEET-UG 2024. The apex court admitted the plea for a hearing shortly.
Petitioner Jaripate Karthik filed the writ petition under Article 32 of the Constitution.
On his behalf, counsels Y Balaji and Chirag Sharma approached the apex court registry for the early listing of the case for hearing.
The petitioner contended that the ‘normalisation formula’ to give grace marks is defective, illegal, arbitrary and a violation of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. He pleaded that the ‘normalisation formula’ should not be applied in the present context, as the exam was held to ascertain the subject knowledge and asserted the adoption of the formula.
The petitioner said the ‘normalisation formula’ should only be extended to the number of questions that may be left unanswered in proportion to the loss of time, given that each question had equal mark weightage and equal time distribution to answer. Moreover, since the exam was conducted in an offline mode, there was no standard procedure to accurately measure the loss of time.
It was on June 8 that the NTA and the Union Ministry of Education announced the constitution of a four-member committee to review the results of over 1,563 candidates, who were awarded ‘grace marks’ to compensate the ‘loss of time’ suffered while appearing for the NEET-UG 2024.
On June 9, another petition was filed to recall the NEET-UG 2024 results and to conduct a fresh examination. The petitioners alleged arbitrariness in the grant of grace marks and contended that the high marks of 718 and 719 out of 720 secured by several students were statistically impossible.
They raised suspicion on several students securing full 720 marks at a centre in Haryana.
