New Delhi: Central Board of Secondary Education, the board responsible for conducting NEET UG 2018, has filed a case in Supreme Court challenging the Madras High Court order. On July 10, 2018, The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court had directed CBSE to award 196 grace marks to students who appeared for the NEET exam in Tamil language in lieu of the multiple errors in the test question paper which was translated to Tamil from English.
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CBSE had been mulling over challenging the decision over the grounds that the original notification for the exam said that for regional languages, in case of any discrepancy the English version would be treated as final.
NEET Tamil Candidates to be awarded 196 grace marks: Madras HC to CBSE
In the NEET exam conducted on May 6, 2018 the question paper in Tamil had 49 erroneous questions. A PIL was filed and the Madras High Court in turn ordered CBSE to grant 4 marks each for these questions whether the student attempted the question or not. The decision could have affected 24,000 students and would have had bearings on the seat allotment as well.
The HC has taken this action based on a petition filed by TK Rangarajan, a CPI (M) Rajya Sabha MP. He claimed that nearly one-third of the question paper was translated wrongly in Tamil and had sought the court to direct the admissions to be held either based solely on the Class XII marks of the students or award 196 grace marks to students who had attempted the exam in Tamil. The MP added that it is now up to the TN government and CBSE to decide whether the admission process will be suspended and the counselling will be held once again.
Meanwhile, as a consequence of the Madras High Court order, Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has suspended the second round of counselling for All India Quota seats and will release the allotment list after the matter is resolved.
There were 180 questions with a total mark of 720 in the NEET. The judges said the students who took the NEET for admission to medical and dental colleges in Tamil should be suitably compensated to provide a level-playing ground.
The CBSE conducted the NEET on May 6 in 136 cities in 11 languages, the results of which were announced on June 4. In Tamil Nadu, about 1.07 lakh candidates took the test across 170 centres in 10 cities.
