The Madras High Court has directed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to allow 38 aspiring medical students from Tamil Nadu to appear for NEET UG 2017, who could not pay the prescribed fee within the deadline due to poor internet connection and outage.
M. Mugunathan and 37 others who were aspiring to pursue medical course approached internet centres in their respective districts to apply for NEET UG 2017. Though they were successful till the stage of applying and getting the application registered, they were unsuccessful in completing the procedure by paying the required fees, as they faced problem in receiving the One Time Password (OTP) to process the payment and ultimately missed the deadline as there was no other alternative way to pay the fee.
According to the students, they had to wait till the last date, expecting policy announcement from the State government with regard to exemption from appearing in NEET as was done the previous year.
When the pleas came up for hearing, Justice Puspha Sathyanarayana said, “The initiative taken by the CBSE in conducting the examination through online is a laudable one. However, the better connectivity has to be addressed or provisions ought to have been made for an alternative method for the situation like the present cases.”
These candidates are from different pockets of the districts in Tamil Nadu. Low internet speed and power outage are perennial problems faced by many even in metropolitan cities. Therefore, no mala fide can be imputed to these candidates who could not remit the fees online in the absence of any alternative mode, she added.
The judge then directed the CBSE to receive their fees through RTGS on or before May 2 and issue hall ticket.
