New Delhi: The education ministry has set up a four-member panel to review the grace marks awarded to more than 1,500 candidates in the NEET-UG medical entrance exam, the National Testing Agency (NTA) announced on Saturday.
The panel will be headed by a former UPSC chairperson, and revised results will be released some time in the next 7 days. Admission process will not be affected, National Testing Agency Director General Subodh Kumar Singh said.
“The panel headed by a former UPSC chairman will submit its recommendations within a week and the results of these candidates might be revised,” Singh said at a press conference in Delhi on Saturday.
“The awarding of grace marks has not impacted the qualifying criteria of the exam and the review of results of the affected candidates will not impact the admission process,” he added.
The result of the medical entrance exam was announced on June 4. A record more than 24 lakh candidates had appeared for the exam this year.
Several students were given “grace marks” for the “loss of time” during their preparations for the examinations. The DG said that the candidates, spread out across six centres, could face re-examination if the panel recommends it.
There have been calls from several quarters for a re-exam alleging that the grace marks awarded to make up for the loss of time at six exam centres have led to the inflation of marks and tampered with the chances of other candidates.
These centres are from Meghalaya, Bahadurgarh in Haryana, Dantewada and Balodh in Chhattisgarh, Surat in Gujarat and Chandigarh.
Several aspirants of the medical entrance exam NEET have alleged inflation of marks which led to a record 67 candidates bagging the top rank, including six from the same exam centre.
The National Testing Agency (NTA), however, denied any irregularities and said the changes made in the NCERT textbooks and grace marks for losing time at the examination centres were some of the reasons behind the students scoring higher marks.
NTA officials also said that in these centres the students did get 3 hours and 20 minutes due to issues such as distribution of wrong question paper, torn OMR sheets, delay in distribution of OMR sheets, etc.
In addition to that, an unusual number of candidates – 67 – got the perfect score of 720/720, while several others got 718 or 719 marks in the test, considered by most students to be a 'tough exam'. Students have alleged a paper leak. The NTA, denying the leak, said that the paper was easy.