Madras HC asks CBSE to award grace marks to candidates who took NEET in Tamil

CHENNAI: The Madurai bench of Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to award 196 grace marks to all candidates who took the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) in Tamil language. The CBSE has been asked to revise the NEET rank list in 2 weeks. 

The decision was taken after it was found that 49 questions in the examination for medical admissions were wrongly translated. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in this regard had been filed in the Madras High Court seeking compensatory marks for Tamil medium students, citing flaws in the Tamil medium question paper.

Earlier on July 6, the Madras HC had lashed out at the CBSE saying that it was being autocratic in the matter related to the errors. It said that despite knowing that a PIL on the matter was filed and it was due for hearing, the CBSE had released the results. "Why did they do so?", the court asked.

Referring to the CBSE's submission, the bench said, "How do you decide the right answers for the questions based on a majority view? CBSE is accepting even wrong answers under the pretext of majority decision. How is that in Bihar state so many students got through the examination?" it asked.

Petitioner CPI-M leader T K Rangarajan had submitted that keywords in the Tamil questions were wrongly translated from English and this caused confusion for the students.

The court had also asked the CBSE to file an affidavit stating among others on whether any exercise was undertaken to ascertain which of the English words in the syllabi for science subjects were incapable of being reproduced in an equivalent word in Tamil.

The judges had also criticised the CBSE saying that the mistakes in the question paper were not mere ambiguity.