No discrepancy found in NEET answer sheets, Bombay HC rejects candidates’ petitions

The Bombay High Court dismissed petitions by four candidates challenging their NEET results after finding no discrepancy between the original answer sheets and awarded marks. The court imposed ₹5,000 costs on each petitioner for making unsubstantiated allegations

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Maharashtra): The Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed the petitions filed by four candidates challenging the results of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) conducted in June.

Justices N B Suryawanshi and A D Shinde of the Aurangabad bench here also imposed a cost of Rs 5,000 on each of the petitioners for levelling unsubstantiated allegations.

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When the court expressed its disinclination to grant any relief, two of the petitioners withdrew their pleas, Deputy Solicitor General of India Ajay Talhar told PTI. The high-stakes entrance examination for admission to medical courses was conducted afresh after it came to light that the paper of the NEET conducted in May had leaked.

Hricha Deshpande, Soham Gavte, Atharva Jagtap and Rahul Aruna Nag had moved the court claiming that the marks appearing in their NEET scorecards did not match their performance, and their answer sheets should be verified.

The court had on July 23 directed the National Testing Agency to produce the original answer sheets after the candidates alleged a mismatch between their OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) response sheets and their marks.

The bench on Thursday examined the original answer sheets in the presence of all parties, and noted that the marks given by the NTA matched the answer sheets. Finding no discrepancies in the evaluation, the court refused relief to the students.