SC sets aside 'blind allocation' of 196 grace marks to 24K students in NEET by Madras HC

NEW DELHI: Clearing clouds of uncertainty hanging over thousands of medial aspiring students who cracked NEET and got admission in colleges, the Supreme Court on Thursday quashed the Madras HC order on granting 196 grace marks to all 24,000 students who took the examination in Tamil Language.

The HC had in July ordered CBSE to grant 196 marks — four marks each for 49 erroneous questions — in the Tamil version of this year’s NEET and directed the Board to revise merit list after the result was finalised. In Tamil Nadu, about 1.07 lakh candidates took the test across 170 centres in 10 cities. There were 180 questions with a total mark of 720 in the NEET and the HC had said the students who took the exam in Tamil should be suitably compensated for wrong questions to provide a level-playing ground. The number of students that appeared in the NEET 2018 was around 13.23 lakh, approximately 10.5 lakh took it in English. Approximately 1.5 lakh students opted for regional languages and of these nearly 24,000 candidates took the examination in Tamil language.

A bench of Justices SA Bobde and L Nageswara Rao, which had earlier stayed operation of the HC order, finally quashed the verdict, saying that “blind allocation” of 196 grace marks was done without application of mind.

“Because of a mistake in translation which could have been detected and avoided by the students, we find it unjust that all the students across the board who took the examination in Tamil have been awarded four marks for all the 49 questions without any reference to the answer of those questions. The consequence is equally unjust and unacceptable as the students who gave the examination in Tamil have been unduly benefited only because they opted to give examination in Tamil. It is said that there are some students who might have otherwise failed but for the addition of marks by the High Court most of these students have scored higher than those who gave the examination in English and other regional languages,” the court said.

“The High Court has made no attempt to see whether the students have in fact attempted answers to the questions, which were claimed to be imperfectly translated and has proceeded to award the full marks for 49 questions to all candidates who had opted to give the examination in Tamil. The method adopted by the High Court is manifestly arbitrary and unjustified and cannot be sustained,” it said.

The bench said that translation of question paper in vernacular language must be done accurately and asked the government authorities to take steps to ensure that such problem does not arise from next year onwards. It said that translation will be done by subject experts who are proficient in both the languages i.e. the source language and the target language.

“The translation will be done from the target language to the source language and back to the target language. Thus, for example a question in English translated in Tamil will be retranslated back to English. This dual translation approach will remove any chance of ambiguity in the question paper,” it said.