In a courtroom where futures often hang by a thread, the Supreme Court shut the door on a lone student’s attempt to rewind the NEET UG 2025 results over a disputed answer. The bench made it clear: individual cracks in a nationwide exam won’t be sealed with judicial cement once the results are out.
A Bench comprising Justices PS Narasimha and R Mahadevan dismissed the petition filed by Shivam Gandhi Raina, a NEET-UG candidate who questioned the correctness of Question No. 136 from Code 47. Raina claimed the National Testing Agency (NTA) had botched the final answer key and asked the Court to pause the counselling process and set the record straight.
But the Court wasn’t convinced. “This is a national-level examination,” the bench observed, “We cannot entertain individual grievances after results are declared, no matter how genuine they appear.”
The student’s legal team, led by Senior Advocate R Balasubramaniam, pointed to last year’s NEET-UG 2024, where the Supreme Court had ordered corrections following expert input from IIT-Delhi. “One mark can shift a student’s destiny,” Balasubramaniam argued, urging the Court to appoint an expert committee again.
Justice Narasimha, however, made a sharp distinction: “The 2024 case was different. That was about systemic flaws and widespread complaints. What we have here is a solitary objection, not a pattern.”
And with that, the petition was dismissed—another reminder from the country’s top court that not every error, even in a high-stakes exam, warrants a constitutional correction.
