NEET UG 2024: Grace marks cancelled for 1,563 candidates, re-exam on 23 June, Centre tells Supreme Court

The Supreme Court was informed on Thursday that the Centre has decided to revoke the grace marks awarded to 1,563 students in the NEET-UG 2024 exam. The affected students will be notified of their actual scores and given the choice to retake the exam. If they opt out of the re-test, their scores from the 5 May exam will stand, as per the government. 

This decision aims to address concerns about fairness in the competitive exam process.

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The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate), or NEET (UG), is an all-India pre-medical entrance test held annually for students aspiring to pursue undergraduate medical courses.

These students, initially awarded compensatory marks due to loss of time during the exam, will now have to decide whether to keep their original scores or opt for a retest scheduled for 23 June. The National Test Agency (NTA) has confirmed that results will be released before 30 June to facilitate the counselling scheduled for 6 July.

Government response

During the hearing, advocate Kanu Agarwal, representing the central government, explained that a panel formed by the NTA recommended revoking the grace marks. The panel found that awarding compensatory marks based on time loss resulted in an unfair advantage, as grace marks should only apply to questions not attempted. 

Consequently, the committee advised cancelling the scorecards of the 1,563 students and informing them of their actual marks.

The bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta noted the union government's submission in one petition challenging the grant of grace marks and issued notice on another petition alleging exam paper leaks, combining it with similar pending petitions.

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The legal proceedings stemmed from three pleas challenging the NEET-UG 2024 results, citing widespread irregularities and questioning the awarding of grace marks to over 1,500 candidates due to time loss during the exam. One petition, filed by online tutoring platform Physics Wallah's chief executive Alakh Pandey, criticized the arbitrary nature of the NTA's decision to award grace marks. 

Another, filed by SIO members Abdullah Mohammed Faiz and Shaik Roshan Mohiddin, sought to recall the results and conduct a fresh exam, alleging statistical improbabilities in some students' scores. 

The third petition, filed by NEET candidate Jaripiti Kartheek, challenged the grant of grace marks, arguing that the normalization formula could only apply to unanswered questions in proportion to time loss.

The controversy

The controversy erupted when the NTA released the NEET UG results on 4 June, revealing an unusually high number of candidates achieving perfect scores of 720/720. Additionally, there were instances where candidates obtained scores of 718 or 719, which some have argued were implausible within the exam's framework.

As many as 67 students scored a perfect 720, an unprecedented occurrence in the NTA's history. Six of these students were from a single centre in Haryana's Faridabad, further raising suspicions about irregularities.

Approximately 2.4 million candidates had participated in the entrance exam held on 5 May across 571 cities, including 14 centres located outside India.

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The results led to serious accusations and public outcry. Suspicions of tampering and potential leaks of exam papers emerged, especially with the significant number of students achieving full marks. The grant of grace marks to over 1,500 medical aspirants exacerbated the situation, leading to the filing of cases in seven high courts and the

On 8 June, the NTA and the Union Education Ministry announced the formation of a four-member committee to review the results of over 1,500 candidates who received grace marks for time loss during the NEET-UG 2024 exam.

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