NEET-UG : Supreme Court Dismisses Students' Plea Alleging Error In Hindi Translation Of Question Paper

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a writ petition filed by 22 NEET-UG candidates who sought recalculation of their scores due to an alleged error in the Hind translation of a physics question in the NEET-UG 2021.

A bench comprising Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice AS Bopanna and Justice Vikram Nath dismissed the petition after a panel of three independent experts constituted by the National Testing Agency opined that the answer for the Hindi and English versions was the same.

The writ petition was filed by NEET candidates challenging the "discrepancy and patent error" in Question No 2 of Section A (Physics) wherein while translating the same from English to Hindi, the word "amplitude of current" has been omitted. According to the petitioners, the Hindi word "dhaara" used in the question does not refer to "amplitude".

On the last hearing date, November 25, the Solicitor General had told the bench that the issue was examined by three neutral experts, who said that the answer would be same irrespective of the alleged discrepancy.

However, the bench asked the Solicitor General if the matter could be re-examined by another set of experts. The SG agreed to do that. Today, the Solicitor General told the bench that the NTA constituted another committee of three professors from IIT Gauhati, Delhi Technological University and the National Physical Laboratory for evaluating the solutions in both the Hindi and English versions of the question.

"All three have concurred that whether we take English or Hindi, the answer remains the same. They said the "dhara" here was of no importance. I don't like succeeding against students. But in this case experts have opined", Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted.

Advocate Archana Pathak Dave, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that "dhaara" does not refer to "amplitude". In the Class 12 Physics book, which is the "Bible" for the NEET students, the word used for "amplitude" is "aayam", she submitted.

"When experts have opined then there is no reason for us to interfere. We could have at least seen if it was a law paper. We have to draw the line that is not our remit at all", Justice Chandrachud said.

The bench dismissed the petition with the following order :

It was that due to the said omission, the candidates who attempted the question on the basis of the Hindi translation arrived at a different answer as compared to the candidates who attempted the question on the basis of the English question.

Young aspiring doctors who appeared in NEET UG 2021 had contended that pertinently, both the incorrect as well as correct answer had been provided as an option to the said multiple choice questions.

In this regard, relief was sought for issuance of directions to the National Testing Agency ("Respondent No 1") to delete Question 2 of Section A (Physics) in question paper bearing code P2 and its corresponding questions in other sets of the NEET UG 2021 question papers and release fresh results.

Petitioners had also sought for declaring NEET UG 2021 as erroneous, faulty, defective and discriminatory and violative of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India, 1950.

"The NTA without taking cognizance of the said error, released an answer key only on the basis of the English translation of the question, thereby putting the Hindi-speaking candidates at disadvantageous position vis--vis their English-speaking counterparts. The said disparity was based upon the practice of the NTA to only treat the English version of the questions as final. The question paper carried an instruction to the said effect stipulating that In case of any ambiguity in translation of any question, English version shall be treated as final, however, there was no ambiguity in the impugned question and the same was an error, because the English version and the Hindi version both were different questions which had different answers," the petition stated.

The petitioners had also averred that the Hindi and the English version of the impugned Question were in itself complete standalone questions, which led to the Hindi-speaking candidates to believe that the impugned question was without any ambiguity and could be solved without a reference to its corresponding English version.

It had further been contended that that impugned question carried 4 marks and one wrong answer was in fact loss of 5 marks since NEET has negative marking.

"Hence discrepancy in the said question has put the Hindi Speaking students/states at a disadvantageous position pushing them back by thousands of years and jeopardizing their future," petitioners contended.

The petition has been filed through Advocate on Record Archana Pathak Dave and drafted by Advocate(s) Kumar Prashant and Manish Sharma.

Case Title: Wajida Tabassum and Ors v. National Testing Agency and Anr | WP(c) No.1260/2021

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