Source: barandbench.com
The Delhi High Court has issued notice in a plea seeking to quash the results of the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (UG) 2019 (NEET-UG 2019) which was declared on June 5.
The notice was issued by a Single Judge Bench of Justice Jayant Nath to the Central Government, Medical Council of India, National Testing Agency (NTA) as well as the Dental Council of India in a petition by several NEET-UG candidates.
The petitioners approached the High Court after discovering that the NTA had not identified and marked the correct options of answers in the answer key issued by them for NEET-UG 2019.
It was also observed that three questions had two correct options which was against the information memorandum issued by the NTA as there could be just one right answer to a question.
The Petitioners submit that they had marked the correct options in the answer sheets which did not correspond to the answer key issued by the NTA.
Thus, if the answer key issued by NTA has wrong reflections for right options or more than one correct option, the entire process of selection and fixing the merit becomes unfair and leads to serious violation of their legal as well as fundamental rights, the Petitioners state.
The Petitioners thus “feel” that if the result of NEET-UG was declared as per the correct answer and correct provisions, their rank in the merit list would improve substantially.
Stressing on the importance of clear and unambiguous questions, it is further submitted,
“In such a tough competition every mark would have a critical bearing on the rank of the candidate and thus would affect his or her choice of college and admission. The very object of conducting the test would stand defeated, in case a wrong answer key is held to be sacrosanct and beyond judicial review.”
The Petitioners have sought the court’s intervention as the process of counselling was yet to begin and was likely to be announced very soon.
“..if the Respondents take appropriate corrective steps before starting of the counselling there will be no prejudices to the Petitioners and other similarly situated students.”, it is stated.
The petitioners have thus prayed for declaration of the revised and corrected result as per the correct answer marked by them.
In the alternative, the petitioners have sought to be awarded the full marks for the controversial questions, i.e. question No. 1, 13, 68 and 155 of their test.
The petition was filed through Corporate Legal Partners, Advocates.
The Court issued notice and posted the matter next for hearing on July 4.
