NEET PG relief: Gujarat HC allows aspirant to fix percentage error in form, join counselling
Gujarat High Court
Ahmedabad: Granting relief to a postgraduate medical aspirant who put the wrong aggregate percentage in his National Eligibility-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET PG) 2025 admission form, the Gujarat High Court has allowed him to rectify the said "inadvertent mathematical error".
The Court has directed the authorities to allow the concerned PG medical aspirant to participate in the ongoing state counselling process, Ahmedabad Mirror has reported.
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As per the latest media report by Ahmedabad Mirror, despite securing an aggregate of 68.30% in his professional examinations, the petitioner, an MBBS graduate, mistakenly entered his percentage as 67.63% while filling out the NEET-PG admission form. Due to this discrepancy, the Admission Committee for Professional Postgraduate Medical Courses cancelled his candidature.
The counsel for the petitioner, advocate Tarak Damani, argued that the mistake was a simple calculation error- neither an act of malpractice nor an attempt at misrepresentation. He also contended that cancelling the candidature of the concerned candidate for a minor clerical slip would unfairly jeopardise the future of a meritorious student.
On the other hand, opposing the plea, the authorities, including the State and the body overseeing the admission process, submitted that the rules were designed to prevent malpractice and that the applicant was expected to exercise due diligence.
However, after reviewing the records, the HC bench comprising Justice Nirzar S Desai adopted a more considerate stance. The bench observed that nothing suggested that the petitioner had acted with mala fide intent or sought any undue advantage.
Granting relief to the candidate, the bench observed in the judgment, "When a student is seeking admission to a postgraduate medical course, such an inadvertent mathematical mistake should not prove costly to the student, and such a minor error should not be allowed to jeopardise a person’s career."
Accordingly, the bench directed the respondents to permit the petitioner to correct his aggregate percentage from 67.63% to the accurate 68.30% in the application form and all connected records.
With this observation, the HC bench quashed the earlier order that declared the candidate ineligible and instructed the authorities to allow him to participate in the postgraduate admission process.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that a Gujarat HC bench had granted relief in a similar case, allowing a postgraduate medical aspirant to participate in the NEET PG admissions after he made an error while filling out the form.
During the form fill-up process, the concerned candidate made an error in calculating his aggregate marks. He inadvertently entered his MBBS aggregate percentage as "66.23%" instead of the correct "66.32%" while filling up the application form. As a result of this, the admission committee cancelled his candidature. Even though the bench agreed to grant relief to the candidate and allowed the concerned student to rectify his NEET PG application form, it also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the candidate for allowing him to undertake the admission process afresh.
