Supreme Court mandated the manual assessment of the answer sheet belonging to a NEET-UG 2025 candidate, who claimed there was an error in the sequencing of pages in his question paper. A panel consisting of Justices B V Nagarathna and K V Viswanathan instructed that the results of this evaluation be documented.
“The petitioner will have the assurance of having his papers checked manually,” stated the bench. The candidate asserted that the NEET-UG question paper had pages arranged incorrectly.
The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is administered by the National Testing Agency for the purpose of facilitating admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, and other related programs in both government and private institutions throughout the nation.
Additional Solicitor General Archana Pathak Dave, representing the respondents, submitted a copy of the question paper to clarify that the error was due to improper stapling.
“Nevertheless, to ensure our satisfaction, we order that the petitioner’s paper be evaluated manually, and the results of this evaluation be recorded. This process should be completed within one week,” the bench remarked.
Dave indicated that the stapling of the question paper was a manual task. “At the very least, the questions should be presented in order,” the bench commented.
It further noted, “Consider the distress of the candidate. This is not a trivial examination.” The law officer mentioned that only semi-skilled or semi-literate individuals were tasked with the stapling duties.
“If we assign this to a literate person and they perform the stapling, we can be certain that they might remember one or two questions and could potentially disclose them,” she stated, describing it as a “rarest of rare” situation.
The bench, however, observed that “17-18 year old” students have been taking their own lives. “Please do not attempt to justify this,” the Supreme Court remarked and scheduled the next hearing for August 12.
