Delhi High Court seeks NTA's stand on plea challenging award of grace marks in NEET UG 2024

A plea has been filed before the Delhi High Court challenging the decision of the National Testing Agency (NTA) to grant grace marks in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, Undergraduate (NEET-UG) exams for medical college admissions [Shreyansi Thakur v National Testing Agency]..A vacation Bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma heard the matter today and granted the counsel appearing for the NTA some time to obtain instructions on the issue. The Court said it will hear the case on Wednesday. .The writ petition filed by a 17-year-old student named Shreyansi Thakur argues that the NTA's decision to award grace marks is arbitrary and is affecting thousands of students.In the NEET-UG exams held in May, it was observed that in Question No. 29 of Test Booklet Code R5, the answers mentioned in both options 2 and 4 were considered correct. This was contrary to the exam instructions, which stated that only one option could be correct for each Multiple Choice Question (MCQ). Given the discrepancy, the NTA decided to award marks to all the students who chose either of the alleged correct answers, thereby benefitting those who guessed an answer or marked the answer they thought was right. It is the petitioner's case that the NTA's decision discriminates against candidates who adhered to the instructions and did not mark an answer for Question No. 29 since it had two correct answers. "In addition, the result declared by the Respondent (NTA) also grants arbitrary and unfair grace marks to various candidates without application of mind. This is an abhorrent violation of rights of all candidates who do not benefit from this arbitrariness and end up losing their ranks (rank differences amount to about 20,000 and more) and therefore the potential of securing a better future," the plea added. .The petitioner is represented by Gauhar Mirza, Partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas along with Suriti Chowdhary and Abiha Zaidi..The NEET-UG exam results published on June 4 drew controversy after it emerged that a surprisingly large number of students (67 students, as per various reports) obtained perfect scores of 720 out of 720. It was also reported that out of the students who received perfect scores, 44 students had secured such a high score as they got a physics question wrong and were awarded grace marks. A public interest litigation (PIL) petition has been filed before the Calcutta High Court as well, alleging irregularities in the conduct of the exam. On June 6, the Calcutta High Court sought the response of the NTA in the matter and posted the case for further hearing after two weeks. In the meantime, the NTA has been directed to preserve the records concerning the exam until further orders..Calcutta High Court seeks NTA response on PIL alleging irregularities in NEET UG 2024