In a significant turn of events for NEET UG 2024, the Centre has announced that grace marks given to 1563 candidates will be rescinded. This announcement was made to the Supreme Court on June 13. These students will now have the opportunity to take a retest, with the examination likely set for June 23 and results expected by June 30. If candidates choose not to participate in the retest, their original scores from the May 5 exam will stand without the previously awarded grace marks.
Advocate Kanu Agarwal, representing the Union Government, conveyed this decision to a vacation bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta. The National Testing Agency (NTA) had constituted a panel to review the situation and concluded that the grace marks awarded for lost time during the exam created an unfair advantage. The panel recommended cancelling the original scorecards of the 1563 students and informing them of their actual scores without the grace marks.
The Supreme Court noted the NTA panel’s recommendations as fair and directed the NTA to proceed with organizing the retest. Senior Advocate Naresh Kaushik, representing the NTA, assured the court that notifications for the retest would be issued promptly, ensuring that results would be available before the counselling scheduled for July 6.
This decision emerged from multiple petitions challenging the NEET-UG 2024 results. Among these, Physics Wallah CEO Alakh Pandey argued that the grace marks were arbitrarily awarded, a stance supported by representations from around 20,000 students. Another petition, filed by SIO members Abdullah Mohammed Faiz and Dr. Shaik Roshan Mohiddin, called for a complete re-examination due to alleged paper leaks and malpractices, which the court agreed to consider further on July 8.
The Supreme Court’s decision aims to maintain the integrity of the NEET-UG examination process, addressing the concerns of affected candidates while ensuring a fair resolution to the controversy.
