The Allahabad High Court has held that disputed examination questions and answer options cannot be referred to an expert unless there are facts before the Court warranting such a reference.

Dismissing the writ petition of a NEET-UG 2026 candidate, it held that an objection to the answer keys raised by one candidate, examined and rejected by the National Testing Agency and echoed by no other, did not call for interference.

Referring to Supreme Court's decisions in UPPSC v. Rahul Singh and Vanshika Yadav v. Union of India, the bench of Justice Arindam Sinha and Justice Satya Veer Singh held,

“Our, humble interpretation of the declarations of law made by Rahul Singh (supra) and Vanshika Yadav (supra) is that there must be facts before the Court to warrant reference to an expert.”

Petitioner appeared in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) UG-2026 and challenged the answer keys to question numbers 60 and 70, one on a zero-order reaction and the other an assertion-reason question on the first ionization enthalpy of oxygen. His case was that the same questions had earlier been put in the Joint Entrance Examination (Mains) of 2019 and 2022, where the answer keys were different. It was pleaded that he had given those answers.

On a query from the Court, counsel for petitioner accepted that his client may well be the only person to have challenged the answer keys, but submitted that this did not take away the Court's extraordinary power to refer the questions and the answer options to an expert. Neither he nor his client, an examinee who had taken advice on the questions from his father, a retired teacher, was an expert, he submitted, nor were counsel for the respondents.

He relied on Vanshika Yadav v. Union of India, where the Supreme Court had asked the Director of IIT Delhi to constitute a team of three experts to determine the correct answer to a question.

Counsel for the National Testing Agency submitted that the petitioner had objected to the answer keys, and his client examined the objection and reiterated that the keys were correct. He relied on UPPSC v. Rahul Singh, in which the Supreme Court had summarised the position that the correctness of key answers is to be presumed, courts should not scrutinise answer sheets as academic matters are best left to academics, and in the event of doubt the benefit goes to the examination authority rather than the candidate.

The Court recorded that it had, when the petition was moved, observed that the petitioner appeared to be the only one disputing the two questions among the large number of candidates who took the test, and it had not been inclined to probe further but for the insistent persuasion of his counsel.

Reading the two decisions together, the Court held that facts must be before it to warrant a reference to an expert. In Vanshika Yadav, it noted, NTA had itself decided on representations to treat two options as correct and had awarded four marks. Before it, the material was the assertion of a single candidate, rejected by NTA and unsupported by any other examinee.

“we have facts before us of one candidate saying two questions were earlier put in Joint Entrance Examination (Mains) of year 2019 and 2022. He raised this objection, negated by NTA. No other of several candidates has raised similar objection. The situation does not warrant interference.”

Accordingly, the writ petition was dismissed.

Case Title: Nitin Mishra v. Union Of India And 6 Others 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 758

Case Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 758

Counsel for Petitioner :- Brijesh Kumar Yadav, Inarmal Yadav

Counsel for Respondents :- A.S.G.I., Aditiya Kumar Singh, Akanksha Sharma, C.S.C., Diptiman Singh, Fuzail Ahmad Ansari, Vivek Kumar Singh

Click Here To Read/Download Order