NEET UG 2025: Supreme Court dismisses re-test pleas for students affected by power outages in MP

On July 23 (Wednesday), a single bench of the High Court refused to pass any interim relief, seeking a stay on the counselling, which has already begun

The Supreme Court on July 25 (Friday) dismissed two petitions filed by NEET-UG 2025 candidates, who suffered a power outage in Indore and Ujjain centres in Madhya Pradesh, seeking a re-examination.

The court refused to interfere with the Madhya Pradesh High Court division bench's judgment which refused the plea for re-test, LiveLaw reported.

The Supreme Court said that the High Court has examined the issue from all possible aspects, including the report of an independent Expert Committee, the report said.

The bench of Justices PS Narasimha and AS Chandurkar said that those students who are eligible for counselling should be allowed to register and participate in the ongoing process.

Notably, the candidates approached the apex court against the July 14 order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court which refused to order a re-test for them.

On Friday, when the matter was taken up, Justice Narasimha stated that the findings of the High Court are correct and that it is not in the hands of the court to pass orders for re-examination noting it to be the prerogative of the NTA.

On July 23 (Wednesday), a single bench of the High Court refused to pass any interim relief, seeking a stay on the counselling, which has already begun.

The single judge of the High Court instead directed the NTA to conduct a re-test of the NEET-UG 2025 exam for candidates affected by a power outage at the centres in Indore and Ujjain. Since the students were put at a disadvantage for no fault of theirs, the court had observed that a re-test was necessary. It said that the counselling process will be subject to the re-test.

However, the division bench set aside the single bench's decision, taking note of a report of an expert committee, which said that even though there was a power outage at some centres, there was sufficient natural light enabling the candidates to take the test.

According to LiveLaw, the court also noted that only 70 out of the 27,264 students had filed the original writ petitions. In the second petition, similar issues have been raised in regards to the test conducted in Chennai, the report said.