HC asks National Testing Agency to probe errors into NEET result

Aurangabad: The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice Ravindra Ghuge and Justice S A Deshmukh on Wednesday directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to take steps to avoid errors in the result of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-undergraduate (NEET-UG) and create awareness through advertisement and notice in newspapers about errors.

The NTA declared the NEET result on September 7. Some students from the city received two marksheets bearing different scores.

One of the city students Bhumija Rathod downloaded her NEET marksheet from the NTA website on the day of the result. It was shown that she scored 661 marks out of the total 720.

Seeing the result, her hopes of securing admission to medical courses brightened. However, when she took another printout of the result from the portal after three days, she was surprised to see just 218 marks.

She sent an email to the NTA about the error in the result. As she did not get any response from the NTA, she filed a petition in the HC. The court rejected her petition since her responses in the answersheet showed that assessment of her paper was correct.

The HC bench observed that three such cases had surfaced within one month of the result declaration.

“We have learnt that similar petitions were also filed in the Delhi HC and the Supreme Court. So, the Agency should publish an appeal through newspapers requesting the candidates to come forward to complain about the error in the result and possible cheating of students, taking into account the rising number of such cases,” the court said in the directives.

Is somebody tampering with the result? Is there a racket active in wrongdoings? How are students getting two marksheets with different marks? The HC bench asked the NTA to carry out a probe through cybercrime branch or competent investigation agency to study these aspects and take proper steps on the grievances filed by students. Adv Chaitanya Dharurkar appeared for the petitioners while adv Mayur Subhedar assisted him. Adv Ashish Jadhvar represented the NTA.