Apex court refuses to award 196 grace marks in NEET
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to award 196 grace marks which were ordered by the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court to NEET students who had opted to write the examination in Tamil on account of error in translation.
A bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao asked the parties to come out with a solution to deal with the situation, saying, “We cannot dole out marks in this fashion. This year’s medical admission process is over so there can’t be any interim relief for this year.”
During the hearing, Centre tells the bench that, “After various judgments from the court, only those with more than 98 per cent marks in board exams were getting admission in government medical colleges.” This led Justice Rao to question the Centre and said, “Where is the change now? The change now is, with NEET, even those with 60% marks can get admission in government colleges,” Centre stated.
The bench observed that it appears that after the judgment, the students who opted for the Tamil language are in the advantageous position over others. The Madurai Bench had on July 10 ordered the CBSE to grant 196 marks – 4 marks each for 49 erroneously translated questions in Tamil– this year to students who took the exam in the regional language. The petitioners had sought full marks for the 49 questions, saying keywords in Tamil questions were wrongly translated from English.