NEET UG 2021: SC issues notice on plea alleging "rigging" of OMR sheets, discrepancies in final results

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has issued a notice in a plea filed by six National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for undergraduate, NEET UG candidates who alleged “rigging of OMR sheets” after publication of answer keys and discrepancies in NEET UG result 2021 by the National Testing Agency (NTA), the LiveLaw reported.

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Alleging discrepancies in the scoring process, the candidates have challenged their marks and ranks secured in NEET UG 2021 conducted on September 12, the report said.

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna was hearing the petition, it said.

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The petitioners argued there is a huge gap between the marks calculated by them on the basis of answer keys published by NTA and the final scores released by the agency on November 1. While one of the petitioners alleged that his calculated score was 564 as per the answer key but the result displayed 164, another alleged that his score was supposed to be 675 according to the answer key but he only got 52 marks in the final result.

"It appears that to be massive rigging in the screening of the OMR sheet soon after the publication of the answer keys and consequent uploading of OMR sheet for self assessment and before the actual declaration of result and score card on NTA's website which has resulted in glaring discrepancy in the marks obtained by the petitioners," the plea said.

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Looking at the huge difference, the petitioners have argued it is quite evident that there is something wrong on the part of NTA which should be dealt with by initiating investigations against it.

Ever since the NEET UG 2021 exam was conducted, several issues of “discrepancies” in either results or question papers have surfaced.

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Recently, NTA agreed before the top court to examine the alleged error in Hindi translation of a physics question in the NEET exam.

The plea had sought direction to NTA to delete the question from the physics section and declare fresh NEET UG results 2021.