Madras High Court Dismisses Appeal Challenging NEET UG 2025 Re-Exam Order

News18

20 hours ago

The Madras High Court dismissed an appeal seeking NEET re-exam, stating it would severely impact over two million students across the country.
The Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal filed by a group of medical aspirants seeking a re-examination of NEET UG 2025. The court observed that allowing such a request would significantly impact over two million students who took the test across the country, as reported by news agency PTI.
The appeal was filed by S Sai Priya and 11 others against the High Court's earlier order on June 6, which had rejected a batch of petitions requesting that the National Testing Agency (NTA) be restrained from declaring the results of NEET UG 2025.
The petitioners had argued that they experienced power outages at four examination centres in Chennai and urged the court to direct the NTA to conduct a re-exam for affected students.
However, a division bench comprising Justice J Nisha Banu and Justice M Jothiraman upheld the earlier verdict and dismissed the appeal.
The bench stated, 'It is to be noted that the integrity of the exam is particularly ensured through human supervision including the presence of the Centre Superintendent, Invigilators, NTA appointed Observers and City Coordinator. All these officials have examined and confirmed that the examination was conducted smoothly. A factual enquiry was undertaken by the NTA and the enquiry was conducted with regard to the field verification through the reports of the examination functionaries and an independent statistical analysis of candidate performance data."
The court further noted that an expert committee conducted a statistical analysis using anonymised data, comparing the average number of questions attempted by students at the concerned centres with those from other centres in Thiruvallur District.
'This analysis found no statistically significant difference in the number of questions attempted, confirming that the alleged power outage did not materially impact candidate performance. Furthermore, NEET (UG) 2025 is a time sensitive and large scale national examination," the bench observed.
Highlighting the importance of maintaining the integrity of educational assessments, the court said, 'This Court cannot sit in an appellate jurisdiction against the considered decision of the speaking order passed by the NTA, after field verification of examination centre and statistical analysis by an independent expert committee with no affiliation to the NTA, unless such decision is demonstrated to be manifestly arbitrary, mala fide or illegal."
The bench concluded that allowing a re-exam under such circumstances would severely disrupt the process and disadvantage the larger pool of candidates.
'In such circumstances, if any re-examination is permitted, the same would severely affect more than two million candidates. Therefore, we do not find any reason to interfere with the order impugned and the writ appeal lacks merit and the same is liable to be dismissed. In the result, this writ appeal stands dismissed," the court ruled.