NEET UG 2024 controversy Explainer: The government has canceled the grace marks given to 1,563 students of NEET exam. Now these students will have two options – either they can appear in NEET UG counseling without grace marks or appear in the exam again. NEET re-exam will be held on June 23. Its result will be declared in June itself so that the counseling starting in July is not affected. Among the 1563 students who got grace marks, the result of those students who will not appear in the exam will be considered on the basis of scorecard without grace marks. That is, grace marks will not be added to their score. In fact, the matter of giving grace marks to some students was one of the main reasons for the NEET result controversy. NEET candidates have also demanded a re-examination alleging paper leak, but the National Testing Agency (NTA) has denied paper leak.
Know here what is the controversy regarding NEET exam and result, why is there a ruckus? What will happen next?
1. How can there be 6 toppers from the same exam centre?
Many students say that in the merit list of NEET toppers released by NTA, 8 students have roll numbers from the same series. Out of 8 students with serial numbers 62 to 69, 6 students are toppers who got rank 1. Six out of eight are from the same exam center in Bahadurgarh, Haryana. Candidates and exam experts have raised doubts on the transparency of NEET regarding this. Why is the surname of 7 out of 8 students not written in the list? Out of these 8, 6 students have got 720 out of 720 marks. The other two have got 719, 718.
NTA's clarification
NTA has clarified that the students' time was wasted at the Haryana exam centre, due to which they were given grace marks as compensation. NTA said that this is just a coincidence. The average result of the centre from which 6 toppers have emerged is already higher than the results of other centres in the country.
Why were grace marks given?
NTA said- Some petitions were filed before the High Courts by the candidates of NEET UG 2024 due to wastage of their time during the exam at some centers. After this, a grievance redressal committee was constituted, which considered the complaints on the basis of factual reports of the officials and CCTV footage from the respective examination centers. Grace marks were given to these students to compensate for the wastage of time.
Grace marks were given on the basis of marks, what was its formula
NTA said- they found out how much time was wasted by those students and how much was the ability of such candidates to answer, on that basis they were given grace marks. They were given grace marks on the basis of a formula decided by the decision given by the Supreme Court on 13 June 2018. A total of 1563 candidates were given grace marks due to time loss.
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2. Why did NTA not give information about grace marks earlier?
Candidates say that why did NTA not inform about the grace marks earlier. Why did it suddenly release the result? Grace marks were known only on the day of the result. The original merit list of NEET should be released even without grace marks.
3. Information about grace marks was not available in the notification
NTA did not give any information about grace marks in the notification. Then why was this policy suddenly implemented in the result and on what basis? After a lot of uproar, NTA told how many students from which centers were given grace marks.
4. Grace marks formula normalization was termed irrational
NTA has said that grace marks were given on the basis of normalization formula made on the basis of a 2018 decision of the Supreme Court. Students say that there was no information about the normalization formula earlier. That Supreme Court case was about law students. It cannot be applied in NEET. NTA did not tell how many grace marks were given for how much time was lost? The format of law paper and NEET paper was different
5. Why the tie breaking policy of NEET has been changed at the time of result.
Why was the tie breaking policy of NEET changed at the time of the result? Why was the 8th rule added when there was no mention of it in the notification, there were only 7 parameters? Why was it not told earlier that the person who applied first will be placed higher in the merit?
6. How did they get 718 and 719 marks, whereas this is impossible.
NEET students argued that the NEET paper is of 720 marks. Each question is of four marks and there is negative marking of one mark for every wrong answer. If a student answers all the questions correctly, he will get 720 out of 720 and if he leaves one question, he will get 716 marks. If he answers one question wrong, he will be left with 715 marks. In such a situation, it is impossible to get 718 and 719 marks.
NTA's clarification
NTA has said that the time of many students was wasted during the examination held on May 5. Students had complained to NTA about the time loss. Keeping in mind the complaints of the students and the court cases related to it, grace marks were given to the candidates as compensation. During this, the normalization formula was applied for some candidates, which was prepared to deal with the situation of time loss after the Supreme Court's decision on June 13, 2018. Due to giving grace marks, their marks have come to 718 or 719.
7. Why there are 67 toppers in NEET
This time a record 67 candidates topped NEET. This includes 53 boys and 14 girls. All these students have got 720 out of 720 marks (99.997129 percentile) and all have got rank 1. The abundance of toppers and the huge jump in cutoff has increased the tension of students and parents regarding admission in medical colleges. NTA says that this has happened due to changes in NCERT books. Due to two answers to a question in Physics, the marks of 44 candidates increased from 715 to 720. Apart from this, this time many candidates were also given grace marks as compensation for wasting their time in the exam.
There was a question on atom in Chemistry in NEET exam. Students were asked to choose one answer from four options indicating which of the two statements given in the question was correct. The controversy arose when NTA, after objections to the provisional answer key, found that two of the given options were stated as correct by NCERT in its old and new books. These students got bonus marks for getting two answers correct.
NTA said that easy exam and increase in registrations are also the reasons behind more toppers. NTA said, “NTA had to give 5 marks to all those students who had chosen any one of the two options. Due to this, the marks of a total of 44 students increased from 715 to 720, which led to an increase in the number of toppers.” NTA clarified that although this reason played a major role, it is also a fact that this year the paper was comparatively easy and there was a huge increase in the number of registrations. This also increased the number of toppers.
8. What does the torn OMR sheet of NEET say?
Regarding the viral video of a NEET UG aspirant claiming irregularities in the scoring of NEET UG 2024 and receiving torn OMR answer sheets in the mail from NTO, it said that
No torn OMR answer sheet was sent from the official ID of NTA. As per official records, the OMR answer sheet is correct and the scores are accurate.
9. Why the result is 10 days earlier
Why was the NEET result released on the day of the Lok Sabha election results? Whereas its expected date was 10 days later. On this, NTA said that the NEET result has been released as part of the process. The result is released a few days after the answer key is released. The exam result was declared in 30 days so that the admission process of 23 lakh students is completed on time.
10. Now what will happen to counseling, what will happen to the petitions pending in the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Thursday reiterated that there will be no ban on NEET UG counseling. That is, there will be no delay in the admission process for various medical courses including MBBS, BDS. Many petitions have demanded cancellation and re-conduct of the exam due to the alleged paper leak in Bihar. The pending petitions will be heard on July 8. NTA has said that it is fully cooperating with the police in the investigation. The investigation of the paper leak case is still going on.
