The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to constitute a three-member panel of experts to ascertain the right answer for a question from the NEET-UG 2024 exam that purportedly has at least two correct answers based on old and new syllabus of the NCERT.
On the basis of this, the National Testing Agency (NTA), the premier agency that conducts the examination, awarded grace marks to some students as a remedy.
Taking cognizance of this, the Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud ordered the board of experts to place their opinion before the court by 12 noon on Tuesday.
This comes two days after the NTA published center and city-wise results online, but with masked identities of the students in a bid to transparently look into anomalies in the pattern of awarded marks. The published list did red flag more patterns of multiple students scoring high marks from one particular center.
Even as the Supreme Court will continue hearing the matter on Tuesday (Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and the NTA will present their argument), with every passing day the students are losing precious time in securing admissions. The NEET controversy, cancellation of UGC-NET and then re-test for over 1000 CUET (exam for entrance of the students into UG programmes) candidates have delayed admissions way past July 15, the sacrosanct date on which Delhi University begins its session.
Says Jaun Samuel, a resident of Delhi, who applied for CUET and is waiting for the mess to get over, “The results are still not out and we are nearing the end of July. All time-lines are going for a toss.”
Adds a teacher with a private university in Meerut, on condition of anonymity, “The private universities across the country are making use of this situation and are literally blackmailing the students and the parents to book a seat. With uncertainty over the announcement of CUET results, the parents and the students are in a real dilemma.”
The candidates who appeared for the NEET and UGC-NET are also waiting for the final Supreme Court verdict to take the next step.
On plans of some universities to compensate for the lost time by holding extra classes and curtailing holidays, teachers say, “Why should students pay for the mistakes made by the institutions like NTA?”
This is a peculiar situation where the educational institutions supposed to ease the load on students are doing exactly the opposite.
