NEW DELHI: In big relief to thousands of students who took admission in medical colleges but were facing uncertainty due to Madras High Court decision to revise the merit list of NEET by giving 196 grace marks to 24,000 who took the entrance in Tamil, the Supreme Court on Friday said that admission and counselling to be done on the basis of the original list and stayed HC order.

The HC had directed that all students who took NEET in Tamil language be given compensatory marks for all 49 unclear/incorrect questions and had directed the CBSE to revise the merit list. The order was passed after the first round of counselling was over and thousands of students had already taken exam. As the merit list in NEET changes dramatically with even one marks, the students who had already taken admission were apprehensive that their position would come down significantly if 196 grace marks is given and may lose seat in colleges.

Dispelling the clouds of uncertainty, a bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao said that the awarding compensatory makes to such a large number of students was not a solution and stayed the operation of HC order. The court, however, agreed that the questions framed in Tamil language for NEET were wrong.. It said that the court would examine setting up of a mechanism to ensure that such problem did not occur in future.

The court passed the order on a batch of petition filed by CBSE and aggrieved students challenging HC order. Additional solicitor general Maninder Singh , appearing for the Board, contended that counselling process for medical admission had come to a complete standstill after HC order and was causing huge uncertainty in relation to the smooth conduct of admission process.

The ASG said that exam was conducted as per the order of the apex court and the HC erred in passing the direction. “CBSE had also demonstrated that if the judgment of the HC is to be implemented, some of the candidates who had taken the NEET examination in Tamil language and had scored upto to 544 out of 720 marks, would now get 750 marks when the maximum marks of the entire question paper are 720,” he said.

Senior advocate Siddhartha Luthra, appearing for Tamil students, contended that the apex court had granted grace marks to students who faced technical glitches in online CLAT exam and there was nothing wrong if compensatory marks were granted in NEET. He said that only 500 out of 24,000 students would be benefited due to grace marks and the bench should not stay HC order.

The court, however, was not convinced and said, “We acknowledge the problem but this is not the solution”. It posted the case after two weeks to examine how to prevent such error in NEET from next year onwards.

