Physics Wallah petitions Supreme Court against giving Grace Marks to 1500 NEET students

By Team Startupcity  |  Thursday, 13 June 2024, 08:43 IST

Physics Wallah petitions Supreme Court against giving Grace Marks to 1500 NEET students
Alakh Pandey, the Founder and Chief executive officer of the edtech startup “Physics Wallah,” has filed a petition with the Supreme Court challenging the alleged random award of grace marks by the National Testing Agency to over 1,500 candidates who participated in the contentious NEET-UG, 2024 exam for admission to MBBS, BDS, and other programs. 
The Supreme Court stated on Tuesday that the sanctity of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG), 2024 has been compromised. The court also requested responses from the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) regarding a second request to hold the exam again on the grounds of alleged question paper leak and other malpractices. 
On Tuesday, Pandey’s lawyer, J Sai Deepak, spoke before a vacation bench that included Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah about the plea for urgent listing. The bench requested that he approach the apex court registry with his supplication. 
The plea disputes the alleged award of grace marks for apparent time lost due to multiple factors. A hearing date has not yet been set for the petition. The NEET (UG) 2024 assessment was held by the NTA on May 5 across 4,750 centres and on 24 lakh candidates took it. 
The evaluation of the answer sheets was apparently completed earlier than expected, as evidenced by the fact that the announcement of the results was made on June 4. An independent, powerful committee should conduct a thorough investigation into how the examination was conducted, according to the plea. 
It inquired about the reasoning behind the NTA’s decision to adopt a policy of awarding grace marks when that was not the previous practice. It demanded that the NTA provide information on the 1563 candidates who received compensatory marks to make up for lost time, including their original scores, the grace marks they received, and their revised scores.
Regarding this, Lawyer Sai Deepak stated, “Multiple petitions have been listed in the Court. Some of the petitions were filed before the declaration of results on the basis that there had been a leak of the paper itself. Notices have been issued in regard to those petitions. Our petition is slightly different.”
“We represent Alakh Pandey, who has collected signatures from about 20,000 students which clearly shows that close to about 70 to 80 marks have been awarded in grace marks randomly to at least 1,500 students. We are challenging the arbitrary award of grace marks for NEET students. The court has indicated that our matter will also be taken up with the other matters but the court is clear that it will not stay the counselling process at this stage”, he added.
Similarly the plea represents, “So much so this clarification came about only when queries were raised as to how 718/719 marks out of a total of 720 marks can be awarded when the same was not technically possible as per the marking scheme”.
 

CURRENT ISSUE

BEST STARTUPS TO WORK FOR

siliconindia