On December 21, 2020, Delhi HC issued a notice to National Testing Agency (NTA), Education Ministry and Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) for alleged discrepancies in Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) UG Exam 2020.

The Delhi High Court issued notice while hearing a plea alleging discrepancies in the OMR sheets of the candidates who appeared in NEET 2020.

About 14 students pleaded the court about instances of tampering with NEET 2020 OMR answer sheets including blank OMR, wrong roll number, incorrect barcode and two different scores for the same candidate on two different dates. The petition was represented by Senior Advocate Gopal Shankarnarayanan and Advocate Tanvi Dubey.

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The petition was filed under the Article 226 of the Constitution of India to bring their attention problems faced by the students in viewing of the Optical Mark Recognition sheets (OMR sheets) which were uploaded on the website of the respondent NTA on October 5, 2020

Further the same problems were faced while the circular of 27 September and 5 October was issued by the respondent NTA inter alia providing for the process to challenge the OMR sheet and the answer key.

The repeated glitches experienced by the students have compelled them to seek High Court’s help so as to ensure transparency in the evaluation process. Petitioners have asked to examine original OMR sheets and resolve complaints regarding tampering of the OMR sheets. In view of this, Delhi HC has asked NTA to issue appropriate regulations to ensure a free, fair and smooth process of evaluation.

On October 5, NTA released the NEET 2020 Answer Key, where it was observed that OMR sheets uploaded were not the same as recorded by the many students. Apprehensive students seeked the help of HC by accusing NTA for tampering their OMR Answer sheets and demanded for evaluation of original answer sheets.

Students made efforts to NTA in order to convey that the evaluation ought to be conducted on the basis of their original OMR sheets and not the “tampered one” but to no avail.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), Education Ministry and Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) have been asked to file a reply on the plea by January 8, 2021 based on which Justice Jayant Nath will pronounce his judgement.

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