Students who gave NEET UG exam in darkness due to power cuts in Indore and Ujjain Today (Jully 16) moved the Supreme Court. They want a re-exam after MP High Court’s order allowing it was overturned.
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NEW DELHI: A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court of India challenging a recent decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which had refused to allow a re-test for NEET UG candidates who had faced electricity failure at their exam centres.
The petitioners brought the matter before Justice Surya Kant on Wednesday, and the Supreme Court has agreed to list it for hearing next week.
Earlier, a single-judge bench of the MP High Court had agreed with the affected students and had ordered the National Testing Agency (NTA) to conduct a fresh exam. However, this decision was later overturned by a Division Bench after the NTA appealed against the re-exam order.
The students have now approached the Supreme Court saying that the exam centres in Ujjain and Indore suffered power outages due to thunderstorms, and there was no proper backup electricity like generators.
They claimed they were forced to write one of the most important exams of their lives “in near darkness” for 1–2 hours, and no extra time was given to them.
The petitioners submitted video recordings, news articles, and even official statements from the District Collector of Indore, who admitted the power issue, to support their claims. These documents were shown to the High Court earlier as well.
In the High Court proceedings, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the NTA, argued that the blackout did not impact the performance of students.
He said,
“There was no adverse impact on student performance”,
pointing to a report by an expert committee. He added that the committee’s analysis showed no significant difference in marks between students at affected and unaffected centres.
But despite this, the single-judge bench of Justice Subodh Abhyankar felt the petitioners had a valid case under Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equality before law. He said the students were clearly put at a disadvantage due to the power cut.
He further said that even the exam authorities accepted that the power outage happened, and that
“They had to rely on alternative lighting arrangements like emergency lights and candles.”
The judge also noted that it was unfair to make students take such a tough exam without proper lighting, and ordered the NTA to conduct a re-test as early as possible.
He clearly directed that the final result should be based only on the new test marks, stating that “the petitioners’ ranks will be determined solely based on their re-test scores.”
However, when the NTA challenged this decision, the Division Bench of the MP High Court struck it down, cancelling the re-exam order.
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CASE TITLE:
Laxmi Devi v. National Testing Agency & Ors.
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