CHENNAI: There is a world of unlimited opportunities beyond medical education too, observed Madras High Court while refusing to accept the plea of a second year MBBS student, KS Manoj, praying for allowing him to continue his studies in any private college as he was relieved from the GovernmentThoothukudi Medical College following a court order over his low score in the national eligibility cum entrance test (NEET).
The first bench of Chief Justice SV Gangapurwala and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy recently made the observation while dismissing the petition filed by the student who was admitted to the medical college during 2021-22 academic year owing to an interim order of the High Court on a petition filed by him claiming a NEET score of 597 out of 720 as he first downloaded through Google.
However, later, it turned out to be 248 when the results were uploaded by the National Testing Agency (NTA). He was dismissed from the Government Thoothukudi Medical College following the 2023 orders of single judge dismissing his petition because the OMR sheet was thoroughly verified and found unaltered, not tampered and in pristine form. A division bench confirmed this order last year.
The bench headed by Justice Gangapurwala, in the recent order, said, “It is true and sad that the petitioner had lost two years and was undergoing the MBBS course for two years in the litigation process of two rounds. But we trust that the truth in black and white, in the form of the OMR sheet, was very much for the petitioner to see and therefore, he has to reconcile. There is a world of unlimited opportunities beyond medical admission too.”
Referring to the petitioner’s claim that his score was 594 as per the Google image he downloaded before the results were uploaded, the bench said such image is ‘incorrect’.
Even if it is actually downloaded from the NTA website, the difference is not one or two. The petitioner had attempted 157 questions only and had not attempted 23 questions. As many as 81 answers were found to be correct and 76 answers were found to be wrong and thus, the petitioner was awarded 248 marks. In this background, when the score had come as 594, the difference in marks was 346, the bench explained.
It also said, “The petitioner is not entitled for any equitable consideration as he had come up with a false case. Therefore, we do not find any equitable consideration to grant him relief. Accordingly, no relief could be granted to the petitioner.”
BY R. Sivakumar
