New Delhi – The Supreme Court today, July 23, directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to revise the NEET-UG 2024 exam results. The revision follows the Court’s refusal to cancel the exam despite a paper leak and focuses on addressing an ambiguous question by recognising the option identified by an IIT-Delhi expert committee as the correct answer.
Previously, the NTA had acknowledged two options as correct for the contentious question. However, the Supreme Court has now mandated that only the option validated by the expert team from IIT-Delhi be considered correct. This decision will affect the scores of over four lakh students who had chosen the other option, resulting in a deduction of five marks (four for the incorrect answer and one negative mark).
The bench, comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, reviewed petitions challenging the NTA’s decision to accept two correct answers. Petitioners argued that, based on the latest NCERT textbook, option 4 was correct, whereas the older NCERT syllabus indicated option 2.
The three-member expert committee, led by IIT Delhi’s Director Professor Rangan Banerjee, concluded that option 4 was the correct answer. The CJI, referencing the committee’s findings, confirmed that option 4 should be the sole correct answer for the disputed question.
The Supreme Court has thus instructed the NTA to revise the NEET-UG 2024 results accordingly, taking into account the committee’s conclusion. The bench acknowledged that option 2 and option 4 were mutually exclusive and could not both be correct.
It is important to note that 4,20,774 candidates had chosen option 2, based on the old NCERT edition, while 9,28,379 candidates had selected option 4. The Solicitor General, representing the Union, explained that the NTA’s initial decision to accept option 2 stemmed from multiple representations by students using older textbooks for their preparation. Notably, 44 out of 61 students who scored a perfect 720/720 benefited from the grace marks awarded for this question.
In light of this ruling, the NTA will revise the NEET-UG 2024 results, ensuring only option 4 is treated as the correct answer, as per the IIT-Delhi expert committee’s report.
