NTA scraps grace marks to 1,563 NEET students, gives retest option on June 23

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, June 13

Amid allegations of paper leak and other malpractices in NEET-UG 2024, the Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court that grace marks given on account of loss of time to 1,563 candidates have been cancelled.

These candidates will be given an option to take a retest on June 23, advocate Kanu Agrawal told a Vacation Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta on behalf of the Centre.

Row over 67 toppers, Bihar arrests

• Record 67 candidates getting perfect score stirred row as usually 1-2 students share top rank
• Some top rankers had same sequence of roll numbers; most from same exam centres
• This led to allegations of inflation of marks, NEET-UG paper leak and other irregularities
• NTA claimed grace marks given to 1,563 students to compensate for delay in exam
• Petitions filed in SC, which noted sanctity of exam affected, but refused to stay counselling
• Bihar cops last month arrested 13 saying NEET papers given to 35 aspirants before the exam

After the withdrawal of grace marks, the number of top rankers has gone down to 61 from 67, officials said. Six of these 1,563 candidates from a centre in Haryana had shared the top rank with 61 others. The decision on scrapping grace marks was taken after meetings held by the National Testing Agency (NTA) Grievance Redressal Committee from June 10 to 12 to allay fears of candidates about any possible irregularities, Agrawal told the Bench.

The committee suggested that the score cards of the affected 1,563 candidates issued on June 4 stood cancelled and withdrawn.

“They will be informed about their actual scores without compensatory marks. Further, a retest will be conducted for the affected 1,563 candidates. The result of those who do not wish to appear for the retest will be declared based on their actual marks (without adding compensatory marks) obtained by them in the test held on May 5 and the marks obtained by the candidates who appear in the re-test will be considered and their marks obtained in the test held on May 5 will be discarded,” the Bench said, citing the committee’s recommendations.

NTA counsel Naresh Kaushik said the retest would be held on June 23 and the results would be declared before June 30 so that the counselling which was to begin from July 6 was not affected. Terming the move to cancel the grace marks as “fair, reasonable and justified”, the Bench allowed the NTA to proceed to hold the retest.

Earlier, the top court had refused to stay the counselling process for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in more than 700 government and private institutions across India even as it noted that the “sanctity of the examination has been affected” and that it “needs answers” from the NTA.

Noting that the issue of compensatory marks stood closed, it posted the petitions, including the one filed by PhysicsWallah founder Alakh Pandey for further hearing on July 8 when other petitions on NEET-UG 2024 were scheduled to be taken up.