SC refuses plea on wrong answer keys in NEET UG

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to consider a plea by a group of candidates contending that some answer keys published by the National Testing Agency (NTA) in questions set in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, held on May 30 for admission to MBBS and BDS courses in medical colleges across the country, were wrong.

A bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Surya Kant said that the courts were not experts to examine such a plea.

“We can't become subject experts. Somewhere down the line, we have to stop. Every multiple answer question would have similar problem,” the bench said.

The court's observations came as senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for Hyderabad-based Kayathi Rohan Reddy and three others, contended there were as many as five questions whose answer keys were wrong and the court should intervene to issue a direction to publish a revised answer keys as the counselling was to take place from June 19 for the results published on June 5.

“They did not rectify the errors pointed by us. It is related to career and life of lakhs of students,” he said.

The bench, however, said, “We can't be sitting as appellate authority over the NTA.”

The court also noted as against 14 lakh candidates who appeared in the examination, only a few had made complaints.

On this, Singhvi said, “Technicality can't be a bar, your hands of justice can reach everywhere. One should not play with the life of students. We are not alleging any mal-intent”

The bench said, “You must understand our limitations. We are no better experts than them (the NTA). In this arena, a lot of interference was taking place, we can't take ourselves as experts.”

On this, the counsel preferred to withdraw the writ petition which sought a direction to the NTA to publish a revised answer key as four of them were “demonstrably and palpably wrong”.

The top court allowed the plea as petitioners pointed out the Delhi High Court was also going to take up a petition in this regard on Monday.