Supreme Court junks plea by NEET-UG aspirants to nullify the exam on account of OMR tampering
A Supreme Court bench of Justices Chandrachud and Bopanna today dismissed the plea by NEET-UG aspirants who sought the court to declare their results as void on the ground that the marks which they calculated and the results they got varied. The petitioner further alleged that their papers have been tampered and manipulated with.
On 9th November 2021 a public notice was released to download their OMR answer sheet and the petitioners claimed that the OMR sheets they downloaded varies from that they actually submitted. The National Testing Agency filed a counter affidavit which indicates that as many as 15,44,274 candidates appeared for NEET and results were declared on 1st November. The counter further indicated that Clause 13.1 for information bulletin contains provisions for display of OMR sheets on website and challenging the grading. The counter further states that Clause 13.2 provides for display of answer key which is open to challenge.
As per the order dictated in the court on 13th October 2021 a sealed hard disk of OMR answer key along with provisional answers were sent to National Informatics Centre for uploading on website of NTS. Upon being uploaded by NTA, NIC also forwarded imaged of the OMR answer key to the email ids of the petitioner. The court recorded that there is only one original answer sheet per candidate and there is no tampering on the scanned images. It was further stated that that the OMR answer sheet of the petitioner is stated to have their original writing.
The court held that 5 of the 6 petitioners and parents verified it and the respondents have submitted the OMR claimed to have been provided by the NTA and the screenshot are fabricated. The court said it will not get into the the dispute relating to fabrication of the OMRs. The court held that as it is not in dispute that the original OMRs of 5 petitioner were verified and they bear the signature of the candidates, it cannot prima facie be suggested that there was any act of tampering or manipulation in the back office of NTA. The exams have been attempted by 15.4 lakhs out of 6 have come here, 5 of them have inspected the same and thus expressed that it will not interfere in the writ petition.
Case title: Prabhnoor Singh & Ors Vs National Testing Agency