The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday moved the Supreme Court against a Madras High Court judgment directing it to grant grace marks to students who wrote the NEET exam in Tamil.
The Madurai Bench of the High Court had ordered the CBSE to grant 196 marks — four marks each for 49 erroneous questions — in the Tamil version of this year’s NEET. Passing the orders on a public interest litigation petition, the High Court directed the CBSE to consequently revise the list of eligible candidates and publish it afresh.
Sources said the main thrust of the appeal would be the fact that an information bulletin of the NEET had said that in case of any ambiguity in the bilingual texts, the English version would be treated as final. The bulletin had clarified that “candidates opting for regional languages would be provided bilingual test booklets in selected regional languages and in English. In case of any ambiguity in translation of any of the questions, its English version shall be treated as final.”
The petitioner in the High Court, senior CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha member T.K. Rangarajan, had sought full marks for the 49 questions, saying the key words in Tamil questions were wrongly translated from English and this caused confusion among the students. There were 180 questions with a total mark of 720 in the NEET.
The judges said the students who took the NEET for admission to medical and dental colleges in Tamil should be suitably compensated to provide a level playing ground.
The CBSE conducted the NEET on May 6 in 136 cities in 11 languages, the results of which were announced on June 4. In Tamil Nadu, 1.07 lakh candidates sat for the test across 170 centres in 10 cities.
