The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking postponement of the NEET-PG 2024 examination, scheduled to be held on August 11.
The Bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra refused to entertain the petition, which also challenged the decision of the National Board of Exams (NBE) to hold the exam in two batches and apply a normalisation formula.
As soon as the matter was taken up, the Bench observed that there were already a lot of problems in the country and now, there was a petition seeking rescheduling of the PG exam.
Appearing for the petitioners, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde submitted that the examination was earlier was previously rescheduled from June 22 to August 11.
The counsel said that he was only pressing for the second prayer, which sought direction to NBE to conduct the exam in a single batch to ensure a uniform and fair testing environment for all candidates.
The Bench pointed out that only five out of over 2 lakh students have filed the petition. The counsel replied that the demand was backed by several students.
The Bench observed that it cannot jeopardise the career of two lakh students at the behest of five students, and dismissed the plea.
Filed by Vishal Soren and four other students, the petition contended that the candidates were facing difficulties in reaching their exam centres since they have been allocated centres in cities, which were inconvenient for them to reach.
Noting that many similarly placed candidates were allocated cities that were highly inconvenient for them to reach, the petition sought details of the formula for normalisation of the four sets of question paper, eliminating any possibility of arbitrariness in the process.
The plea further submitted that the allocation of test cities was made on July 31 and designated centres were declared on August 8. This left the candidates with very little time to travel to their respective centres for exam on August 11.
It said the exam was scheduled to be conducted in two batches and the formula for normalisation was unknown to the candidates, thereby causing apprehension to the petitioner.