Calcutta High Court Seeks NTA's Response On NEET Candidate's Plea Alleging 370-Mark Discrepancy In Scorecard

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday sought a response from the National Testing Agency (NTA) on a writ petition filed by a NEET-UG 2026 candidate alleging a substantial discrepancy between her evaluated score and the marks reflected in her scorecard.

Justice Amrita Sinha directed the NTA to file its response by July 28 while hearing the plea of Sreja Mahanti, a medical aspirant from Hooghly's Dankuni, who appeared in the NEET re-examination conducted on June 21 after the original examination was cancelled nationwide over allegations of paper leaks and other irregularities.

According to the petition, after the NTA released the final answer key and furnished her Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet, the petitioner compared her recorded responses with the official answer key and calculated that she ought to have secured 659 marks out of 720.

However, the scorecard issued by the NTA awarded her only 289 marks, resulting in an alleged discrepancy of 370 marks. The petitioner contended that despite repeatedly submitting representations seeking verification and correction of the apparent error, no action was taken by the examination authority.

Appearing for the petitioner, Advocate Sabyasachi Chatterjee submitted that the discrepancy had deprived the candidate of an opportunity to participate in the ongoing counselling process for admission to government medical colleges, placing her academic career in jeopardy.

The petition alleges that the NTA's failure to verify and rectify what it describes as a "manifest discrepancy" in the evaluation of the petitioner's OMR sheet is arbitrary, unreasonable and violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

It has further been argued that the High Court, in exercise of its writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution, is empowered to direct verification and correction of an objectively evaluated OMR answer sheet where the records produced by the examination authority themselves disclose a prima facie error in evaluation.

Case: SREJA MAHANTI VS UNION OF INDIA AND ORS.

Case No: WPA/17728 of 2026