NEET 2018: SC scraps grace marks awarded to students who took exam in Tamil

SC also directed that from the year 2019-20 onwards the NEET-UG Examination will be conducted by the National Testing Agency

The Supreme Court on Thursday quashed the Madras High Court directive to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to grant 196 grace marks to students who suffered from the erroneous Tamil translation of 49 questions in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for undergraduate medical admissions.

"The method adopted by the High Court is manifestly arbitrary and unjustified and cannot be sustained," the top court said in its judgement.

The apex court observed that the 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 court also directed that from the year 2019-20 onwards the NEET-UG Examination will be conducted by the National Testing Agency and the bilingual examination will be conducted after the question paper is translated as set out according to the instructions in the affidavit dated October 22, 2018, signed by Dr Vikas Gupta, Director, National Testing Agency.

On July 10, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court directed the CBSE to award additional marks to students who wrote the NEET in the Tamil language in 2018.

As per the ruling, four marks each will be awarded for each of the wrongly-translated 49 questions, following which a new ranking list will be put out in two weeks.

49 questions were wrongly translated for students who wrote the NEET in the Tamil language in 2018, after which a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed regarding the same.

The NEET was conducted on May 7 this year, for which over 1.3 million candidates appeared across the country.