NEET-PG 2024: Supreme Court denies request to reschedule NEET-PG 2024; exam set for August 11

PTC News Desk: On Friday, the Supreme Court rejected a plea to postpone the NEET-PG 2024 examination, which is scheduled for August 11. The decision was made by a bench consisting of Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. The court emphasised that it could not delay the examination, which affects the futures of approximately 200,000 students, based on the requests of just five individuals.

The NEET-PG exam, initially slated for June 23, was rescheduled to August 11 due to concerns about irregularities in other competitive exams. Despite this, the petitioners argued that the new date posed significant difficulties. They pointed out that the late announcement of test cities on July 31 had created logistical issues for candidates, particularly regarding travel arrangements. With the exam date approaching, many students were struggling to find last-minute transportation, facing high costs for airfare and limited availability of train tickets.

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The petitioners also expressed concerns about the examination being conducted in two separate batches. They feared that one batch might encounter a more challenging set of questions compared to the other. To address this concern, they requested that the normalization formula—used to ensure fairness across different question sets—be disclosed in advance to prevent any suspicion of arbitrariness.

"The fact that the examinations will be conducted in two batches and that the formula for normalization is unknown to the candidates causes apprehension among the petitioners. There is a likelihood that one batch of candidates may face a more difficult question paper than the other. Therefore, it is requested that the normalization formula be disclosed before the conduct of the examinations to eliminate any fear of unfairness," the petition stated.

Anas Tanwir, the Advocate on Record (AOR) representing the petitioners, argued that the lack of transparency and the challenges associated with distant test centers could disadvantage many students. Vishal Soren, one of the petitioners, suggested that administering the exam in a single batch would ensure a uniform testing environment for all candidates.

Despite these concerns, the Supreme Court upheld the decision to proceed with the examination on the scheduled date, maintaining that the interests of the large number of students could not be compromised for the issues raised by a few.

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