The Supreme Court issued a notice in a plea filed by a doctor against the National Board of Examination seeking the release of the question paper and answer key of the candidates for NEET PG 2021 in order to reevaluate/re-check in case of any discrepancy in the scores.
A Bench comprising Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Surya Kant heard the matter.
AOR Kaustubh Shukla appeared on behalf of the doctor.
There are other Writ petitions filed in the Apex court against the National Board of Examination seeking the same relief as the petitioner.
Petitioner Sushant challenged a serious instance of discrepancies in his score for NEET PG. the petitioner highlighted that there are thousands of other candidates across the country facing similar issues with their score of NEET PG.
It is submitted that the NBE by not releasing the answer sheets is in gross violation of the landmark judgment CBSE & Anr v Aditya Bandopadhyay & Ors. wherein it was held that an answer sheet is information under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and therefore, students have a fundamental and legal right of having access to their answer sheets under the RTI Act.
The petitioner submitted that clause 9.7 and clause 10.4 of the NEET PG Information bulletin is unconstitutional and deprives the petitioner of their fundamental right to know.
“Clause 9.7 NEET-PG is a proprietary examination and is conducted only by NBE. The contents of this exam are confidential, proprietary and are owned by NBE. NBE explicitly prohibits the candidate, from reproducing, transmitting or publishing any or some contents of this exam, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means verbal or written, electronic or mechanical for any purpose whatsoever. NBE shall not entertain any request for sharing any content of the examination including answer keys/ answer sheets.”
Further, as per Clause 10.4, NBE is depriving the candidates of revaluation/re-totalling/re-checking of responses filled by them. It states as, Clause 10.4 There shall be no revaluation of rechecking or re-totalling of marked by the candidates. Requests/ Queries for revaluation/ re-totaling shall not be entertained.
The petition also prays to
- Declare the Clause 9.7 and 10.4 of NEET PG information bulletin 2021 as unconstitutional
- Direct the establishment of a high-powered committee to examine instances of alleged discrepancy raised by thousands of candidates across the country in order to ensure fairness and transparency in the evaluation mechanism
- Direct NBE to upload individual OMR sheets in login account along with question paper and corresponding answer sheet of the candidates of NEET PG-2021
- Direct NBE to allow