NEET 'grace marks' row: Tamil Nadu may move court against NTA

NEET 'grace marks' row

NTA NEET UG 'Grace Marks' Controversy: The Tamil Nadu government has announced plans to pressure the National Testing Agency (NTA), responsible for conducting the NEET-UG 2024 exam, to disclose its evaluation methods, including the contentious award of 'grace marks'. Senior officials indicated that the state is considering legal action against the NTA to ensure transparency and fairness in the evaluation process.

The NTA released the NEET UG 2024 results nearly 10 days ahead of schedule, coinciding with the Lok Sabha election results on June 4. This early release and the high number of perfect scores have raised suspicions among students, parents, and academicians. There were multiple reports of question paper leaks, with police cases registered and over a dozen people arrested. Despite this, the NTA proceeded with releasing the results.

The issue of 'grace marks' has been particularly controversial. The NEET-UG 2024 prospectus does not mention any provision for grace marks, yet the NTA awarded them to candidates from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Chhattisgarh who had raised concerns over the loss of exam time during the examination. The NTA claims to have formed a grievance redressal committee to assess the time loss and compensate accordingly, based on a mechanism established by the Supreme Court in 2018 for a fully-computerised CLAT examination, even though NEET is a pen-and-paper test.

The Tamil Nadu government has highlighted several anomalies in the NEET-UG 2024 results. There were 67 students with perfect NTA NEET scores of 720/720, a significant increase compared to previous years. Some students, awarded grace marks, achieved scores of 718 and 719, which is otherwise considered highly unlikely in NEET. Additionally, the exact formula used to determine 'answering efficiency' and the resultant varied marks have not been clearly explained by the NTA.

Further, the NTA's handling of a disputed Physics question has been criticized. More than 13,000 students challenged the NEET provisional answer key due to differences in NCERT textbook editions, resulting in the acceptance of two correct answers instead of one. This change boosted the scores of 44 students to 720. Normally, in competitive exams, agencies omit such questions for evaluation, but the NTA did not follow this practice.