MADURAI
The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Monday allowed the appeal preferred by the National Testing Agency (NTA) against the order of a single bench that had directed revision of NEET rank of a medical aspirant.
The single bench, in its order, directed the NTA to consider the plea of the candidate who had wrongly mentioned his community status as OBC, instead of SC. The court had ordered that the candidate be placed under the SC list and his ranking revised.
Challenging the order, the Centre submitted that the candidate, M. Vikram Balaji, had wrongly mentioned his community status as OBC instead of SC in the application form for NEET 2019. Though two opportunities were provided to the candidate, he did not make the correction, it was argued.
A public notice was issued on the website on January 14, informing students to carry out corrections, if any, in the application form. The application could have been corrected till January 31, the deadline. On May 27, another opportunity was provided till May 31 to carry out the correction.
Yet both the opportunities were missed by the candidate. It was not the responsibility of the Centre to vouch for the information/documents in the online application of candidates. It was for the candidates to ensure the authenticity of information uploaded by them, the Centre said.
Taking the submission into account, a Division Bench of Justices K. Ravichandrabaabu and Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy allowed the appeal preferred by the Centre and set aside the single bench order that had granted relief to the candidate.
