NEET ‘grace marks’: TN may move court against NTA
Chennai: Tamil Nadu govt will pressure National Tes ting Agency (NTA), which conducted NEET-UG 2024, to make public its evaluation methods including award of ‘grace marks’, to prove the process was fair, said health minister Ma Subramanian on Friday Senior officials sa- id TN is also considering mo- ving court against NTA.
“Even students with 650 marks of 720 may not get into govt medical colleges this ye ar,” Subramanian said. “Aca demics say NTA’s arbitrary decision to award grace marks has caused widespre ad irregularities. There were 67 students with 720/720. Sin ce 2020, there have been just one or two students who have had a perfect score. Some stu- dents, who were awarded gra- ce marks, have 719 and 718 marks a score that is other- wise impossible in NEET. We will discuss this issue with the chief minister and ex- perts for further course of ac
tion.”
NTA released NEET re- sults nearly 10 days ahead of schedule, coinciding with LS election results on June 4.
Question paper leak ig nored: There were at least three reported instances of question paper leak, police cases registered and more than 12 people arrested. And yet, NTA released the results. “They argued that it did not benefit students as they were already in the exam centre when the leak happened. How is it then that one centre has a bunch of students with a perfect score? When so ma- ny students get high scores, suspicion grows strong. Also, the agency has mentioned their names without initials, surname, or middle name in the toppers list,” said student consultant Manickavel Aru-
mugam. Grace marks: “One, the re is no mention of such a pro vision in the prospectus Two, it is unfair to selectively offer grace marks to students
only because they made a re presentation. And, three, NTA is hiding behind a six- year-old Supreme Court or der passed for a fully-compu- terised CLAT examination.
whereas NEET is a pen-and-
paper test,” said senior advo
cate P Wilson.
Two answers for one qu-
estion. More than 13,000 sta
dents challenged the provi
sional answer key of one qu-
estion in physics. Due to dif
ferences in NCERT
textbook’s old and new edi
tions, NTA said two options
could be taken as correct in-
stead of one. With this, the
score of 44 students went up
from 715 to 720. “With negati-
ve marking, it is natural for
students to skip a question
when they see two possible
answers. When they skip,
they lose four marks, but if
they answer it wrong, they lo
se one more mark due to ne
gative marking.” said Syed A
Rahim, a NEET coach. “In
competitive exams, agencies
normally omit such ques
tions for evaluation. We don’t
know why NTA didn’t do so.”
RISK
Garde
Death due to infection from injection Trof
Three major anomalies in NEET 2024 have been flagged.
