CBSE moves SC against HC order to give extra marks to those who took NEET in Tamil

Students appearing for NEET wait outside an examination centre in Madurai on on May 6, 2018  

Passing the orders on a public interest litigation, the High Court directed the CBSE to consequently revise the list of eligible candidates and publish it afresh.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday moved the Supreme Court against a Madras High Court judgment directing it to grant grace marks to students who wrote the NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) in Tamil.

The Madurai Bench of the High Court had ordered the CBSE to grant 196 marks — four marks each for 49 erroneous questions — in the Tamil version of this year’s NEET.

Passing the orders on a public interest litigation, the High Court directed the CBSE to consequently revise the list of eligible candidates and publish it afresh.

The petitioner, senior CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha member T.K. Rangarajan, had sought full marks for the 49 questions, saying key words in Tamil questions were wrongly translated from English and this caused confusion among the students.

There were 180 questions with a total mark of 720 in the NEET. The judges said the students who took the NEET for admission to medical and dental colleges in Tamil should be suitably compensated to provide a level-playing ground.

The CBSE conducted the NEET on May 6 in 136 cities in 11 languages, the results of which were announced on June 4. In Tamil Nadu, about 1.07 lakh candidates took the test across 170 centres in 10 cities.