The Madurai bench of Madras High Court has asked the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to award 196 in grace marks to the students from Tamil Nadu who had attempted the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2018 in Tamil. The Madras High Court ordered for awarding the grace marks as it got convinced that 49 questions in the Tamil medium question paper of NEET exam were mistranslated.
The Madras High Court order will significantly change the current rankings of NEET 2018. The CBSE has to release a revised NEET rank list based on Tuesday's order within two weeks, the court ordered. The counselling has been suspended till the new merit list will be issued.
A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Madras High Court by CPI(M) leader T.K. Rangarajan after the mistakes came to his notice. In his plea seeking compensatory marks for Tamil medium students, Rangarajan had submitted that key words in the Tamil NEET question paper were wrongly translated from English, leading to confusion among the students.
The judges, in their order on Tuesday, criticised the CBSE and said the mistakes in the NEET question paper were not mere "ambiguity".