Students at a NEET centre in Chennai. (File)
THE SUPREME Court on Friday stayed a Madras High Court order to grant 196 grace marks to all students who appeared for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) in Tamil this year.
On July 10, the Madras High Court had ordered the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to grant the grace marks — four marks each for 49 questions — following a PIL which said keywords in these questions had been wrongly translated in the Tamil question paper. The court also asked the Board to bring out a fresh list of qualified candidates.
Hearing a plea filed by the CBSE, the Supreme Court bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao stayed the high court’s order, saying that “we cannot dole out marks in this fashion”. Issuing notice, the bench posted the matter for hearing after two weeks and asked the parties concerned to come up with a solution.
The bench observed that the high court’s order placed the students who sat for the exam in Tamil at an advantageous position. The NEET-2018 paper, for admission to medical and dental colleges, had 180 questions with total 720 marks. Citing media reports, the petitioner had said that about 24,000 students appeared for the exam in Tamil.