NEET 2020: SC directs NTA to consider providing original OMR sheets to candidates

They submitted that several efforts were made to reach out to the NTA to no response. One petitioner, however, received a response on October 11 wherein it was indicated that the OMR sheet appeared fabricated.

The Supreme Court has ordered the National Testing Agency (NTA) to consider providing the original NEET 2020 Optical Marck Recognition (OMR) sheets to students if a representation has been made for the same. The Bench of justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ajay Rastogi was hearing a petition filed by 19 NEET candidates under Article 32 contending that the OMR sheets uploaded by the NTA do not tally with the actual answers given by them. They had also challenged an NTA circular that mandated an amount of Rs 1,000 to be charged per question for reassessment. This means that for 180 questions in the MBBS entrance test, students will end up paying Rs 1.8 lakh for a reassessment.

In the petition filed by the students, they also alleged that there was a huge apprehension of tampering with the answer sheets. Various discrepancies were noticed including tampering of roll number, booklet number, signatures, the difference in scores reflected from the expected score, blank OMR sheets, the difference in scores initially uploaded and the revised scores, the difference in the number of questions shown to be attempted as opposed to those actually attempted etc.

It was contended that the process to challenge the responses in the OMR sheet, as per the October 5 notice, is unjust and manifestly arbitrary. The payment of Rs 1,000 per question accumulates to a huge sum, which is beyond the financial capacity of the petitioners and similarly placed students. For instance, the petitioners paid substantial amounts, including Rs. 91,000 by one petitioner, to challenge the OMR sheet.

The petitioner candidates further argued that any kind of tampering, manipulation or fabrication with the OMR sheets will dilute the transparency in the evaluation mechanism itself. To address the complaints, NTA should verify the uploaded OMR sheets with the carbon copy of the original OMR sheets retained by it after the exam's conduct.

Further alleging discrepancies in NEET Results 2020, the petitioners submitted that they have had a great academic record and the present inconsistencies in the OMR sheets have traumatized them.

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