Plea Seeking Release Of Answer Key & Question Paper, Allowing Revaluation For NEET PG 2021: Supreme Court Issues Notice To NBE

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice on the plea for a direction to the National Board of Examination to release the question paper and answer key of the candidates for NEET-PG 2021 candidates, and to allow them the option of revaluation/rechecking in case of discrepancy in their scores.The bench of Justices D. Y. Chandrachud and B. V. Nagarathna was told by Senior Advocate...

The bench of Justices D. Y. Chandrachud and B. V. Nagarathna was told by Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, for the petitioners, "This is a very serious issue. All of us are doctors. There are 16 lakh under-graduates who sit for NEET-UG, while only about 1.75 lakh, less than 10%, who are all doctors, who take the NEET-PG. They are following a completely different system for us! We are not allowed to keep the question papers, we are not shown the answer sheets, the answer-key is not uploaded! We have no idea how many questions were right, how many were wrong!"

Justice Chandrachud remarked, "The question bank for PG is very limited, while for UG it is very large. If it is disclosed for the PG, the sanctity of the examination process will suffer. If the question paper is disclosed, then all the coaching centres will (unclear)..."

Justice Nagarathna added, "Then there will also be a debate on whether an answer is correct or not and there will be a challenge to that...If the answer key is uploaded, the sanctity of the answers is called into question."

"For the UG also, what is uploaded is the OMR sheet, which just has a blackened 'A', 'B' or 'C'. No one can get any clue as to what the question was. We have no problem if the same is done here also!", urged the senior advocate.

He continued to plead, "Right from the school level to now, we have had a method of re-evaluation! Otherwise, this exam is being taken out of all the exams in the country and the natural corollary is that even if there is something wrong, it will remain? There has to be some level, some shred of transparency!"

"Let us issue notice and atleast see what the other side has to say", conceded Justice Chandrachud.

The other prayers sought in the petition are:

1. Issue an Appropriate Writ, Order or Direction, in the nature of a Writ of Mandamus, under Article 32 of the Constitution to direct establishment of a high-power committee to examine instances of alleged discrepancy been raised by thousands of candidates across the country in order to ensure fairness and transparency in the evaluation mechanism;

2. Issue an Appropriate Writ, Order or Direction, in the nature of a Writ of Mandamus, under Article 32 of the Constitution to direct Respondent No. 1 to upload individual OMR answer sheet in login account along with the question paper and the corresponding answer key, immediately after the examination;

3. Issue an Appropriate Writ, Order or Direction, in the nature of a Writ of Mandamus, under Article 32 of the Constitution to direct Respondent No. 1 to provide the answer key and question paper to the candidates for NEET-PG 2021, upon them filing RTI application;

4.Issue an Appropriate Writ, Order or Direction, in the nature of a Writ of Mandamus, under Article 32 of the Constitution to direct the Respondent No. 1 to allow the candidates with an option to raise challenge the answer key in case of dispute questions

Case Title: Dr. Manjunath B Tadasad & Ors. v. National Board of Examination & Ors.

Plea Seeking Release Of Answer Key & Question Paper, Allowing Revaluation For NEET PG 2021: Supreme Court Issues Notice To NBE

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