NEET 2025: SC junks plea Seeking Final Answer Key publication Before Results
Supreme Court of India
New Delhi: The Supreme Court recently dismissed as withdrawn a plea that challenged the National Testing Agency's practice of publishing the final answer keys of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) examination after announcing the final result.
"After arguing the matter for sometime, learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioner seeks permission to withdraw the Writ Petition with liberty to approach the jurisdictional High Court. Permission to withdraw, as prayed for, is granted. Accordingly, the Writ Petition is dismissed as withdrawn with liberty as prayed for," ordered the top court bench comprising Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Manmohan.
Filing the plea, the petitioner had challenged two questions after the provisional answer keys were published. Even though the petitioner had raised objections to those two questions, after an inquiry, he was informed that the NTA would publish the final answer keys only after the final result was declared.
According to the petitioner, this leads to the revaluation of ranks, causing "serious consequences" and violating Article 14 of the Constitution, as candidates who have been wrongly ranked higher due to getting more marks for incorrect answers would gain an unfair advantage over candidates who have been given correct answers.
As per the latest media report by Live Law, when the petitioner's counsel, Senior Advocate Hufeza Ahmadi, started his submission before a top court bench, Justice Manmohan asked why the petitioner did not approach the High Court bench. In response, Ahmadi pointed out that the issue raised in the plea had "all-India ramifications".
In response, Justice Mishra suggested that the petitioner could approach the concerned High Court. Justice Manmohan also observed that the Court wants to benefit from the High Court's order.
Further, while considering the matter, Justice Mishra remarked in a lighter vein that NEET was only benefiting lawyers. "There is news in today's newspaper, the new regime has settled in the USA, lawyers are getting benefited. 400% increase in litigation," observed Justice Mishra.
However, trying to justify why the Article 32 plea has been filed, Advocate Ahmadi argued, "Today, you have 22.7 lacs students in NEET, one high court taking one view and another high court taking another view, that's a huge problem. Secondly, kindly see, what is the core of the matter, you have in NEET what is called as the provisional answersheet, answersheet as a particular key. Three questions that I have pointed out are wrong, the answers are wrong. Now, that the practice they have been following...answer keys have been published and I have made objections, now the difficulty is, they must [publish the final answer keys] before the declaration of results."
Responding to this, Justice Manmohan observed that even after the declaration of the ranks, there still could be a challenge to the answers, if they were wrong as alleged by the petitioner.
"There will be then lakhs of cases [if final answerkeys is published before the final result is declared]...Because of this one case, there will be huge complications. This process will never come to an end," observed Justice Mishra.
Accordingly, the bench granted liberty to the petitioner to approach the High Court and dismissed the plea as withdrawn.
