Supreme Court refuses to allow CBSE appeal in NEET case

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to allow CBSE’s appeal against a Bombay High Court order asking it to give proportionate marks to a batch of candidates, who lost 30 minutes due to the invigilator’s fault during the NEET undergraduate exam 2018.

A vacation bench of justices S Abdul Nazeer and Indu Malhotra directed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to comply with the high court’s order within 10 days.

This came as the board yesterday moved the apex court against the validity of the June 15 high court order regarding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test which was held on May 6 for admission to MBBS course.

The high court had directed the CBSE to apply the formula suggested by the apex court and award additional proportionate marks to 24 students who had appeared in examination at Nagpur in Maharashtra but were not allowed by the invigilator to write the exam for the stipulated three hours.

Petitioner Vaishnavi Sandeep Maniyar moved the high court claiming that the invigilator allowed them to write the exams from 10.30 AM only, instead of the scheduled 10 AM.

The apex court had in the CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) case directed for applying normalisation formula on the basis of answering capacity of the candidates, aspiring for admission to National Law Universities, and allot additional marks in view of technical glitches faced by them.

In the instant case, the high court had directed the CBSE to revise the marks of candidates, release corrected mark-sheet by June 22 and consider them for second round of counselling for admission to MBBS course.