NEET-UG 2025: Rajasthan High Court Rejects Plea For Re-Test/ Bonus Marks Over Power Outage, Other Alleged Deficiencies At Exam Centers

Rajasthan High Court rejected the petitions filed by 31 candidates who appeared for NEET-UG 2025 in Sikar, Rajasthan, seeking re-examination or bonus marks owing to power failure/outage and adverse weather conditions at their exam centers, on account of the principle of de minimis non curate lex— meaning, the law did not concern itself with trifles.The bench of Justice Sameer Jain took into account the fact that there were 98 centers allotted in Sikar out of which around 15 centers were adversely impacted due to power failure affecting 5,390 candidates. Out of these, only 31 had approached the Court. Such isolated grievances by statistically negligible candidate could not vitiate a large-scale pan-India level examination, the Court said. “Plea made for conducting re-examination as the examination in question i.e. NEET-UG was scheduled and carried out on pan-India basis; nevertheless the grant of bonus marks at the fag end cannot be entertained, since the interest of approximately 22 lakh candidates cannot be sacrificed to provide a remedy to grievances made by handful of candidates, moreover, unsupported by cogent and substantial evidence of prejudice.”It was the case of the petitioners that the power outage ranged from between 5 to 28 minutes which impacted their performance materially. It was argued that there was a reasonable classification between the candidate who appeared at affected areas and those at non-affected areas. Hence, such classification warranted differential treatment. On the contrary, it was submitted on behalf of the State that only 0.575% of the candidates appearing from the cetnres at Sikar had raised any grievance in this regard. Apart from these handful candidates, 99.5% candidates appeared to be satisfied. Further, it was argued that an Expert Committee was constituted for detailed analysis of the grievance, which concluded that the duration allotted at the affected and un-affected centres remained the same. The counsel further submitted that the marks secured by the petitioners as well as other candidates of the affected centres were as high as 600, which reflected a very good performance and no substantial prejudice could be ascertained to the petitioners. After hearing the contentions, the Court took into account the minute proportion of Sikar candidates that had approached the Court, and opined that, “In view of such proportion, the principle de minimis non curat lex—the law does not concern itself with trifles—would squarely apply. As isolated grievances raised by a statistically negligible number of candidates cannot, by themselves, vitiate a large-scale examination conducted at a PAN India level.”It was held that power outages were due to storm and rains which were vis major events, beyond the control of any party. Hence, it could not be accepted that the State ought to have ensured uninterrupted power supply. The Court appreciated the argument put forth by the State about the very good performance by many candidates from the affected centres, as well as the view of the Expert Committee. It stated that these negated the allegation of systematic prejudice.In this background, it was held that the plea by candidates seeking re-examination or bonus marks could not be accepted since the interest of almost 22 lakhs candidates who appeared in NEET Pan-India could not be sacrificed to provide remedy to handful candidates that too in relation to grievances unsupported by any substantial evidence. Accordingly, the petitions were dismissed. Title: Roshan Yadav v Union of India & Ors., and other connected petitions Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (Raj) 231Click Here To Read/Download Order

NEET-UG 2025: Rajasthan High Court Rejects Plea For Re-Test/ Bonus Marks Over Power Outage, Other Alleged Deficiencies At Exam Centers

Nupur Agrawal

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