NEET-UG 2024 | 2 candidates approach Supreme Court against Re-NEET, say it is unfair to scrap the entire exam due to wrongdoing by a few

The petitioners/interveners Ms. Kritika Garg and Ms. Priyanjali Garg submitted that students who have prepared for years should not be subjected to the test of rewriting the examination. They said this would not only be “unfair” to the majority of students, but would also cause hardship for their families.

The demand pointed out that the NEET-UG exam is one of the toughest exams and should not be re-conducted just because certain allegations have been made. The petitioners, residents of Meerut, claimed to have secured 705 and 690 marks respectively, solely due to their hard work and merit.

It may be noted that the present application has been filed in pursuance of a writ petition seeking recall of NEET-UG 2024 results and holding of re-examination. The same was requested due to alleged paper leaks and other malpractices.

On June 13, a holiday bench including Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, had issued an opinion in this written petition.

The request, however, indicated that the allegations of malpractice may involve a small number of students compared to the number of students who took the exam based on their hard work.

“Abandoning the entire process for the lack of students, for the misdeed of a few, would be really unfair and tortuous to other students who have not indulged in such activities..”

He also noted that since the issue relating to pardon has already been settled by conducting an examination for all 1,563 students, therefore this issue is cleared. Furthermore, the applicants allege that opposition political parties have transformed the issue into a “political issue”.

The application also stated, unambiguously, that the coaching centers aimed to retake the exam in order to benefit from the provision of intensive courses or additional test series to prospective students.

“No one is claiming that all students who got good grades got them through unscrupulous and unfair means. Penalizing students with good grades earned through hard work and merit will cause a lot of trauma and stress and re-drill should not have been allowed.”

“Just because the cutoff was higher in the NEET UG exam, it cannot be a ground to challenge the entire exam.“, the application adds.

Finally, candidates also made sure to highlight the problem with physics questions that had more than one answer. On this, they said that this could “hardly” be a reason to proceed with the examination and added: “This problem is common in many competitive exams and can be fixed easily.

Based on this above projection, they argued that the re-conduct of NEET-UG 2024 would cause a lot of harassment to meritorious students like them, who have secured their marks and scores on their own.

The application was filed through AoR Sanchit Garga.

Case Details: Application for intervention filed in the case of Abdullah Mohammed Faiz and Anr. vs. National Testing Agency (NTA) and others, WP(C) No. 369/2024