Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Binod Kumar Dwivedi of the Indore bench of the High Court gave this verdict after hearing the arguments of all the concerned parties on the appeal filed by the National Testing Agency (NTA), a lawyer representing the candidates said.
On June 23, a Single bench of the High Court comprising Justice Subodh Abhyankar of the Indore bench had ordered a re-test of 75 affected candidates while citing Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which ensures equality and justice, as the basis for its decision, stating that the students were placed at a disadvantage through no fault of their own.
The single bench of the HC had observed that the power failure created an unequal playing field, as some students at the same centres had access to sufficient natural light while others did not, PTI has reported.
Also Read: NEET UG: HC stays results for 11 Exam Centres in Indore affected by Power Cut
In its order, the Single bench of the HC had mandated the NTA to hold the retest as soon as possible and to consider only the new scores for the petitioners' ranking.
However, the Court had specified that "those persons who have filed the petition after the declaration of provisional answer key, i.e., June 3, 2025, shall not be entitled to get any benefit of this order." Last month, the decision was reserved after hearing the arguments from all the parties involved.
Arguments by the petitioners:
NEET UG examination, which was held on May 4 this year, is the gateway for medical aspirants to get admitted to undergraduate medical courses across the country. However, this year, on the day of the exam, several exam centres in Indore faced a power outage because of the weather conditions.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that around 27,000 students appeared for the NEET UG exam in 2025 in Indore, for which 49 centres were set up. In one of the pleas, the petitioner alleged purported mismanagement and lack of power backup for around 1 to 2 hours while organising NEET exam at some of the centres in Indore.
More than 60 petitions were filed before the High Court from Indore and Ujjain in connection with this issue. It was alleged by the petitioners that despite the red alert, the authorities failed making proper arrangements for a power backup and due to this, the candidates had to face complete mismanagement for 1 to 2 hours, because of which the students at the centres were forced to write their exam in the poorly lit areas. This caused extreme stress to them, alleged the petition.
Representing the NTA, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta countered that alternative power arrangements, including candles, emergency lights, and inverters, were available at the exam centres. He also presented a committee report stating that power was restored promptly after the outage was reported.
Division bench Stays NEET Re-test:
After a single bench of the High Court on June 23 ordered a NEET re-test for the 75 affected candidates, NTA challenged the order of the Single bench of the High Court, and a Division bench of the High Court has now stayed the order of the NEET re-test.
While pleading on behalf of the NTA in the high court before it passed the order, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta requested the division bench to stay the June 23 single bench order as an interim relief.
PTI has reported that talking to reporters, Mridul Bhatnagar, the lawyer of the affected candidates, said, “After the hearing, the division bench stayed the single bench’s June 23 order till the decision is taken on the appeal filed in this case. The court fixed July 10 as the next date of hearing in the case.”
About 22 lakh candidates appeared in NEET-UG across the country, including 27,264 students from 49 examination centres in Indore, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta told the court.
He said that the power supply was disrupted for 10 to 15 minutes in some centres of Indore, but there was sufficient natural sunlight and a committee of experts has come to the conclusion that the disruption in power supply did not affect the performance of the candidates of these centres.
Mehta stressed that a candidate from one of the centres in Indore, where power supply was disrupted, had performed exceptionally well in NEET-UG and secured the second rank at the all-India level.
He also argued that if the NEET-UG exam is conducted again for candidates from centres where the power supply was disrupted, the difficulty level of the questions would be different from the previous exam.
The matter has now been listed for a further hearing on July 10.
NTA in its affidavit dated 19.05.2025 stated that field reports obtained from the City Coordinator, Center Supervisor and Observers as well as report from the District Collector, Indore suggested that there was no obstruction in proper completion of exam. However, as a measure of abundant caution a response analysis of the questions attempted by the candidates on their respective OMR Answer sheets has been carried out by a team of Statistical Experts engaged by NTA. According to NTA, this body said that the Committee carried out a detailed statistical analysis and according to NTA findings of Committee suggests that there was no major deviation amongst the centres which are purportedly affected due to the weather and the centres which were unaffected.
However, the Court had earlier said that the report "takes into consideration only the data that has been obtained from various centres, but, is sans the adverse weather conditions that prevailed on the said date, leading to power disruption and the resultant adverse effect on the performance of the petitioner."
As per the latest media report by The Hindu, the Court had further said, "Such a report, which does not take into account the human emotions prevailing at that time, cannot be blindly accepted at its face value. It must be remembered that the exam was only three hours in duration, in which, even for ten minutes, if a student faces a difficulty in reading and writing due to a power outage, the same has the effect of rattling one’s mental condition and is sufficient to disturb his or her composure and focus for the remaining time."
During the hearing, the Court had also switched off the lights in the courtroom and said that it had "an effect of dimming the light in the courtroom to relatively low levels by way of natural light."
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