NEET RE-TEST: HOW MADHYA PRADESH HIGH COURT AND MADRAS HC APPLIED DIFFERENT YARDSTICKS

Madhya Pradesh High Court went by a rights-based approach to order a retest whereas the Madras High Court was cautious about disrupting the timeline of such a large phenomenon as the NEET exam

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On May 4, candidates across the country filed into their registered examination halls to write the NEET-UG exam, attempted this year by approximately 20.8 lakh students. Some candidates in the States of Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu sitting for the three-hour exam of 180 questions claimed to have faced a problem that they strongly believed had a direct consequence on their performance.

During the exam hours, thunderstorms and bad weather conditions caused power outages in test centres across both States, leading the courts to hear writ petition pleas for retest and to adjudicate on whether the power outage and its impact on exam performance was strong enough to grant the plea.

In Madhya Pradesh, the petitioner's argument was that due to "severe thunderstorms" and subsequent power outage the petitioner was forced to give her exam in the dark which affected her performance. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, the petitioner's counsel reported power outages from 20 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes in various examination centres that affected the candidates' performance in the exam. This was also attributed to bad weather conditions. At the MP High Court, it was argued that power was brought back as soon as possible and without CCTV footage it would be difficult to ascertain how much of a disadvantage candidates faced during the outage. The MP High Court also took into account the comparison of number of attempted questions between the petitioning candidates with other candidates who were in the same exam hall.