A “high-powered committee” will reexamine the compensatory extra marks awarded for lost exam time to 1,563 candidates in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) 2024 for undergraduate medical seats, the National Testing Agency announced on Saturday amid allegations of irregularities in the results.

The NTA said the new committee would analyse the recommendations made by an earlier “grievance redressal committee” that had awarded the compensatory marks, raising the scores of six candidates to the maximum possible 720 and contributing to a record 67 candidates with full marks.

The high-powered committee’s mandate is “limited to those (1,563 candidates) who lost time at six centres,” said Subodh Kumar Singh, the director-general of the NTA, the government agency that conducts tests for entry into engineering, medical, management courses and other programmes.

The committee, chaired by a former member of the Union Public Service Commission and other members from the academia and the health sector, will reexamine the aspect of compensation for the lost time, Singh said. He said the NTA expects the recommendations in about a week.

Several candidates have questioned how 67 candidates scored 720 out of 720 and how others were awarded 718 and 719. Under marking rules, 718 and 719 are considered “impossible” because every question carries four marks, with each incorrect answer awarded minus 1.

The allegations of irregularities and paper leaks have drawn the attention of Opposition parties. The Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had on Friday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe.

But Singh asserted on Saturday that there was no paper leak. “The integrity of the examination was not compromised in any way,” he said. More than 2.3 million candidates had taken the NEET-UG held on May 5 2024 at 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 cities abroad.

The NTA in a June 6 media release had attributed six of the 67 full scores and the scores of 718 and 719 to extra marks awarded by a grievance redressal committee for lost exam time to 1,563 candidates at six centres.

The grievance redressal committee which the NTA said consisted of “eminent experts from academia and examinations” had decided to compensate the affected candidates based on their answering efficiency and the amount of time they had lost.

Among the 1,563 candidates who received extra marks for lost time, 790 have scored beyond the cut-off that determines which candidates are eligible to apply for seats in medical colleges. Around 1.3 million candidates have qualified for some 100,000 MBBS seats in government and private colleges across India.

The NTA has also said that 44 candidates had received full scores (720) on account of a flaw in one question in the physics section of the paper. But the NTA’s explanation would still imply that 17 students scored full marks this year and the 44 had scored 716 before they were awarded the extra marks for the physics question.

The agency has attributed the results, including the higher cut-off scores this year, to the competitive nature of the examination and higher performance achieved by candidates this year. The average score out of 720 of the qualified candidates this year was 323.55 compared to 279.41 in 2023 and 259.00 in 2022, the NTA said.