Representative photo: Shutterstock
The Supreme Court on Friday challenged the National Board of Education’s last-minute changes to the NEET-PG 2024 pattern, saying they were “highly unusual” and could cause students to “break down”.
A bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud heard the submissions of senior advocate Vibha Datta Makhija and advocate Tanvi Dubey, representing the students, and asked the National Board of Education (NBE) and the Centre to respond to the petitions within a week. It also listed the petitions for hearing on September 27.
The senior advocate initially said the issue pertained to last-minute changes in the exam pattern, normalisation of marks, publication of answer keys and question papers of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for Post-Graduation (NEET-PG), which was held on August 11.
She said there were no rules or clarity and the exam was split into two parts three days before the test.
“There has to be a standardized approach,” she said, adding that there were no rules to determine how the exams were to be conducted. “Everything was dependent on a single information bulletin that could be modified at the discretion of the authorities.”
The NBE’s lawyer disputed the requests, stating that nothing new or unusual had happened.
“It is very unusual that students have a breakdown three days before the exams (the exam schedule has been changed),” Chief Justice Chandrachud said. On September 27, he listed the pleas, keeping in mind the upcoming counselling for admission to postgraduate courses.
The petition, filed by Ishika Jain and others, was last heard on September 13.
There is a push to make the answer keys and question papers of NEET-PG, 2024 public and standardise the marks as the test has been split into two parts to ensure transparency in the selection process.
NEET-PG is conducted for admission to courses after MBBS and BDS.
The results, announced by the NBE on August 23, have raised concerns among students about unexpectedly low scores.
After the scores were compared with the unofficial answer keys, many students raised suspicions about discrepancies in the ranking process. They urged the NBE to release the official answer keys and set up a complaints portal to address the issues.
Makhija had earlier said that the NBE did not make the exam questions or answer keys public and that without knowing the correct answers, candidates could not assess their performance in a transparent manner.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First publication: Sep 20, 2024 | 6:45 PM IST