The Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court it would cancel the grace marks awarded to 1,563 candidates in this year’s NEET-UG, held for admission to undergraduate medical seats, and conduct a retest for them.

If these candidates do not wish to take the retest, they will be awarded the actual marks they obtained in the original May 5 exam, after deducting the grace marks.

These students were given grace marks ostensibly to compensate them for loss of time at their exam centres — these 1,563 were apparently not given the full 3 hours and 20 minutes to write the exam but it remains unclear why.

The award of the grace marks — which was apparently one reason that an unprecedented 67 candidates scored a full 720 out of 720 — triggered nationwide protests by NEET aspirants and students’ organisations, including the RSS student arm ABVP.

The vacation bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta recorded the assurance from the central government’s counsel, Kanu Agrawal, about the cancellation of grace marks and a retest.

Agrawal said the government decision was based on recommendations from a committee that the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducted the exam, had formed following the student protests.

The apex court also recorded an undertaking from advocate Naresh Kaushik, appearing for the NTA, that the retest would be notified on Thursday itself and held on June 23.

The results are to be declared before June 30 so that the counselling process, which was likely to start on July 6, would not be affected.

Justice Nath, who headed the bench, said the court found the committee’s recommendations “fair, reasonable and justified”.

“Accordingly, the respondent NTA may proceed for holding the retest as indicated above,” Justice Nath said, dictating the order.

The court, however, tagged some of the petitions that had raised various other issues relating to the conduct of this year’s NEET-UG for hearing on July 8.

The apex court has been hearing a batch of petitions moved by aggrieved students and academics. The petitioners have challenged the grace marks and sought a stay on counselling, a recall of the results, and a special investigation team (SIT) probe into allegations of paper leak and the award of grace marks.

The petitioners have flagged that 67 students scored full marks and that 8 of
them were from the same exam centre.

According to the NTA, the grace marks were awarded on a recommendation from a grievance redressal committee it had formed, relying on the apex court judgment in Disha Panchal and Others vs Union of India, 2018.

On Thursday, the Centre and the NTA placed before the court the report of the subsequent committee that recommended cancellation of the grace marks.

“…This committee concludes that the most appropriate, fair and reasonable solution to the issue would be subjecting those 1,563 candidates to a retest at the earliest possible,” Paragraph 8 of the document says.

Around 22 lakh students took the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate on May 5 across 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 foreign cities.