New Delhi: The Madras High Court has ordered the concerned authorities to grant four grace marks to a SC applicant who was unsuccessful for the MBBS programme due to the prescribing of an incorrect question in NEET conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
The bench was considering a writ appeal from T. Udhayakumar, who chose not to respond to question 97 because none of the crucial responses seemed to be accurate.
He decided to leave it unanswered out of concern for losing one mark for providing the incorrect response. However, he only secured 92 out of 720, one short of the cutoff mark of 93 for SC candidates. He also posted a message online. But it wasn't considered.
As a result, he filed a writ petition, but later withdrew it without getting permission from the court to move it again at a later time.
Thus the current appeal revealed the writ petitioner writing that "When the appellant/writ petitioner hailing from a downtrodden community has secured 92 marks in the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET UG) 2022 examination, considering the wrong key answers given to question No.97, he failed to secure the four marks."
Further, the writ petitioner writes that "It is also the admitted case of both parties that the key answers to the question have been wrongly given.
In a recent order allowing the appeal as a special case, the first bench of acting chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Krishnakumar stated that it is not out of context to mention that Article 46 of the Constitution states that the State shall protect the economic interests of the weaker sections of society, in particular of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The bench stated that because the NTA is a State-owned agency, it cannot refuse to provide the appellant, the four grace marks, who is from a disadvantaged social group. The courts determined that the appellant's writ appeal is unquestionably admissible.
The appellant should be the only person to receive the remedy offered because he contacted this court promptly and diligently. The bench emphasised that this order was made in the unique circumstances of the current case and should not be regarded as precedent-setting.
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