KOCHI: In a major development, the Kerala High Court on Saturday directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to permit a student from Kerala to appear for the National Eligibility cum-Entrance Examination for Under Graduate courses (NEET-UG) scheduled to be held at Bangalore for the students of Manipur on June 6.
The candidate will be issued an admit card to participate in the examination. It was made clear that if the petitioner attempts to write the examination on June 6, the results, if any, obtained following the examination conducted on May 7 will stand cancelled, and the petitioner will have no option to claim that the better of the results must be accepted.
Justice Gopinath P issued the interim order on a petition filed by Minha Sadique of Kannur seeking a directive to NTA to conduct a reexamination for her as she lost one hour of examination time. The examination commenced at 2 pm on May 7.
On opening the seal and verifying the pages in the Test Booklet, the petitioner was shocked to find that the Test Booklet provided to her did not contain all 32 pages, as four pages of the Chemistry section were missing.
When this was brought to the attention of the invigilators, she was asked to return the Test Booklet and wait until a new Test Booklet was provided. Thereafter, the petitioner was provided with a new Test Booklet, but only at 3.30 pm, submitted by advocate Nandagopal S Kurup, the petitioner’s counsel.
The counsel also pointed out that the Mumbai HC granted relief to a student who suffered an injury owing to rush at the exam venue and had permitted that student to take part along with the students of Manipur in the examination scheduled for the students from Manipur on June 6.
The NTA’s counsel submitted that 30 minutes after the matter was reported, the petitioner was issued with a fresh test booklet, and she was also provided 30 minutes at the end of the scheduled exam time to compensate for the time taken to replace the booklet. However, the court observed that there was a discrepancy in the test booklet supplied to the petitioner.