A group of students moved the Supreme Court on Thursday claiming that answer keys of four questions in the National Eligibility-cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admissions to MBBS and BDS courses were apparently incorrect. The test was held on May 5.
In response, the top court has agreed to hear the plea of medical aspirants tomorrow.
A vacation bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi agreed to hear the plea filed by four students who appeared for the exam.
The petition filed by four Hyderabad-based students -- Kayathi Mohan Reddy and three others through advocate Mahfooz Nazki, said that National Testing Agency (NTA) which conducted the exam issued wrong answer keys and therefore jeopardised the career prospects of the aspirants who sat for the exam.
The exam was conducted on May 5 and the official answer key was issued on May 29 to the questions asked in the examination.
"Upon perusal of the key, the petitioners were shocked to note that answers to a number of questions were demonstrably wrong," the plea said.
The students said they gave the representation about the errors in the official answer key on May 30 and subsequently on June 5, a revised answer key was published.
"Pertinently, no option was given to the candidates to file any objections. To the shock and chagrin of the petitioners, not only did the key continue to have errors, some answers that had been correctly notified earlier, stood changed to a wrong answer," the petition said.
"...it is thus ex-facie evident that the whole exercise of examination conducted by the respondent no. 1 (NTA) is grossly illegal, arbitrary and impinges upon the constitutional and fundamental rights of the Petitioners herein and is vitiated in terms of the law laid down by this Court", it said.
The plea said, "The respondents have not only failed to rectify the defects/errors in the question papers but have also refused to accept any representations sought to be made by the petitioners in respect of the revised key. The whole process is, therefore vitiated and is liable to be set aside".
The petition claimed that the authorities concerned discarded the representation sent by students on June 9, citing that the matter is already been referred to the specialists in the field, and the final answer keys was published subsequently. The petitioners have cited NCERT textbooks in their defence.
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