NEET 2019: Supreme Court declines to entertain plea seeking quashing of answer key

The Supreme Court today declined to entertain a petition filed by MBBS aspirants claiming that the answer key published for this year’s National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET 2019) was incorrect..The students had also alleged that some questions from NEET 2019 were out of NCERT syllabus..The petition has, however, been withdrawn, and the students have been granted liberty to approach the High Court by the Vacation Bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Surya Kant..NEET 2019 was conducted on May 5 and the official answer key to all the sets of questions was published on May 29. The petitioners claim that they made a representation on May 30 pointing out the incorrect answers to the questions..A revised answer key was published on June 5, after which there was no option given for filing objections. Answers to the questions in this key were also found to be incorrect by the petitioners..They thus moved the Supreme Court challenging the “illegal, arbitrary and unlawful action” of the National Testing Agency (NTA) in publishing the erroneous answer key. The petition had prayed for the Court to direct the NTA to revise the answer key and quash the erroneous one published earlier..Senior Counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, arguing for the petitioners, submitted before the Court that in competitive exams like this, every single mark makes a difference..The Court, however, noted that it cannot become an appellate body of the NTA. It observed that the action of the NTA may not be illegal, arbitrary or unlawful, given that it took cognizance of the objections raised and published a revised answer key..The Court indicated its inclination to not interfere in the matter, leading to the petitioners withdrawing the plea..Read the Order:.Bar & Bench is available on WhatsApp. For real-time updates on stories, Click here to subscribe to our WhatsApp.