NEET-UG 2024 : Physics Wallah CEO Moves Supreme Court Challenging Grant Of Grace Marks By NTA

Alakh Pandey, the CEO of the educational technology company Physics Wallah, has approached the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the National Testing Agency (NTA) to award grace marks to several candidates who attended the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test(NEET) for the Under Graduate (UG) medical admissions this year.

The writ petition, filed on June 9, was mentioned by Advocate J Sai Deepak yesterday before a vacation bench of the Supreme Court for urgent listing. In response, the bench, headed by Justice Vikram Nath, told the lawyer to mention the matter before the Registry so that the listing request could be routed through the Chief Justice of India.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued notice on another petition which seeks cancellation of the NEET-UG 2024 test held on May 5 over an alleged paper leak. Observing that the sanctity of the exam has been affected, the Court sought a response from the NTA on the allegations of paper leak by July 8. However, the Court turned down the prayer to stay the counselling process. It may be noted that the said petition was filed before the declaration of results on June 4.

Pandey's petition questions the NTA's decision to award grace marks as "arbitrary". His lawyer stated that Pandey has collected representations from about 20,000 students showing that about 70 to 80 marks have been awarded in grace marks randomly to at least 1,500 students.

Another NEET candidate has filed a petition challenging the award of grace marks to compensate for the alleged loss of time during the exams. He argued that the “normalization formula” to award grace marks at best, if at all, can only extend to the number of questions that may be left unanswered in proportion to the loss of time, given that each question has equal mark weightage therefore equal time distribution to answer each question can be assumed.

On June 9, another petition was filed in the Supreme Court to recall the NEET-UG 2024 results & the conduct of a fresh examination.The petitioners have alleged arbitrariness in the grant of grace marks. In this regard, it was contended that high marks of 718 & 719 out of 720 secured by several students were “statistically impossible”. It was alleged that the grant of grace marks by the National Testing Agency, purportedly due to delay during the exam, was a mala fide exercise to give “backdoor entry” to certain students. The petitioners also raised suspicions about the fact that 67 students from one particular centre got full 720 marks.

Case : Alakh Pandey v. National Testing Agency and others | Diary No.26433/2024