Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday slammed the Modi government over alleged irregularities in the NEET medical entrance exam and called for resolution of students’ “legitimate complaints” through an investigation.
NEET Result Controversy: Several aspirants of the medical entrance exam NEET have alleged inflation of marks which led to a record 67 candidates bagging the top rank, including six from the same exam centre. Amid extensive discussions surrounding the NEET results controversy, the Delhi High Court (HC) on Friday sought the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) response to a petition filed by a NEET-UG candidate. The candidate’s grievance concerns a question in the answer key that allegedly had two correct answers in the answer key.
NEET UG 2024 Result Controversy: Delhi HC seeks NTA’s stand on plea concerning NEET answer key
- As per the news agency PTI report, a vacation bench of Justice D K Sharma asked the NTA’s counsel to seek instructions on the petition, which has prayed that equal marks should be awarded to those who did not attempt the question as has been done for those who attempted either of the two correct answers.
- The petition has said the principle of fairness in a competitive examination mandates that all candidates should be evaluated on an equal footing and alleged that the authorities compromised the fairness by awarding marks to two correct options when the instructions had clearly indicated that only one option was correct.
- To avoid a negative impact on her score, the 17-year-old petitioner chose not to attempt the question and scored 633 out of 720 marks, with a total percentile of around 98 and an all-India rank close to 44,700 in the entrance examination, the plea has said, PTI reported.
- The petitioner has said a single mark can significantly alter her all-India rank and therefore, sought a direction to the NTA to correct and re-publish the NEET-UG 2024 results, ranks and percentiles based on the revised marks.
- “On 03.06.2024, the respondent published the final answer key. It was observed that for question no. 29 of Test Booklet Code R5, both options 2 and 4 were considered correct, contrary to the instructions that stated only one option could be correct,” the petition has said, PTI reported. “Not awarding marks in the case of a wrong question and forcing candidates to mark one, in the case of a question having two correct answers, is antithetical to the instruction that only one answer shall be right. It is submitted that it is extremely arbitrary for the respondent to expect candidates to attempt a wrong question, when there is negative marking and each mark can make a difference of hundreds of ranks, if not thousands,” it has added.
The plea has further said the results declared by the authorities were arbitrary and based on unfair grace marks given to various candidates, without the application of mind. “After the publication of the final result, it was identified that 67 candidates achieved a perfect score (720/720). However, trends prior to 2024 present a significantly different picture,” the plea has said. The matter will be heard next week.
Students’ legitimate complaints must be resolved through probe: Priyanka on NEET ‘irregularities’
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday slammed the Modi government over alleged irregularities in the NEET medical entrance exam and called for resolution of students’ “legitimate complaints” through an investigation.
पहले NEET परीक्षा का पेपर लीक हुआ और अब छात्रों का आरोप है कि इसके रिजल्ट में भी स्कैम हुआ है। एक ही सेंटर के 6 छात्रों को 720 में से 720 अंक मिलने पर गंभीर सवाल उठ रहे हैं और कई तरह की अनियमितताओं की बातें सामने आ रही हैं। दूसरी ओर, रिजल्ट आने के बाद देश भर में कई बच्चों के…
— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) June 7, 2024
Sharing a post on X, Gandhi wrote, “First the NEET exam paper was leaked and now the students allege that there has been a scam in its results as well. Serious questions are being raised on six students of the same centre getting 720 out of 720 marks and many kinds of irregularities are coming to the fore.” “Why is the government ignoring the voice of lakhs of students? Students want answers to legitimate questions related to the rigging in the NEET exam results,” the Congress general secretary said.
As per Section 14 of the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, the NEET (UG) has to be conducted as a common and uniform National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test [(NEET (UG)] for admission to undergraduate medical education in all medical institutions. The National Testing Agency conducted the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (UG) for more than 24 lakh candidates at 4750 different Centres located in 571 Cities throughout the country including 14 Cities outside India on May 5 from 02:00 PM to 05:20 PM.
(With PTI Inputs)