NEET 2017: Madras HC orders stay on declaration of results till June 7

The Madras High Court had on May 22 sought the CBSE's stand on a plea to cancel the May 7 National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

Representational image - File photo

Chennai: The Madras High court on Wednesday ordered a stay on the NEET 2017 results declaration on a plea that demanded cancellation of the examination held on May 7.

The HC has asked CBSE not to announce the results till June 7 until final orders are passed.

The Madras High Court had on May 22 sought CBSE's stand on a plea to cancel the May 7 National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, held for selection of candidates for undergraduate medical and dental courses.

A vacation bench of Justice R Mahadevan had sought CBSE's stand issuing it notice on the plea by an aspiring medical student's mother, who has contended that the examination breached the students' right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution.

The mother of the candidate, who took the test in English language, has termed the test as being violative of the Article 14 contending that all the question papers in various language, including Hindi, English and Tamil, were not same and not of same difficulty level.

The petitioner had submitted that selection under NEET would not amount to testing equal skills.

It would amount to treatment of unequals as equals and thereby violating Article 14 of the Constitution, she had submitted.

She had submitted that though the test was conducted across India in all major languages, including Tamil, English and Hindi, the question paper in English was based on the CBSE syllabus, whereas the one in Tamil was based on the state syllabus, as per PTI.

She had alleged that the authorities never told the candidates who took up NEET that the question papers in different languages would not be the same and that they had the discretion to frame different set of questions in different languages.

Stating that the present evaluation system was contrary and in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, the petitioner had prayed for an interim injunction against the declaration of results and had sought a direction to cancel the test.

She had further sought a direction to re-conduct NEET with same set of questions of all major languages in India. 

(With PTI inputs)