Expert committee announces NEET UG 2024 retest for 1,563 grace mark recipients

The expert committee has decided to re-conduct the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 for over 1,563 aspirants who were awarded grace marks.

The decision was announced following a comprehensive review of the normalization policy that was adopted for these candidates.

The affected candidates, who were from six centers across India, were awarded "grace marks" to compensate for the "loss of time" suffered while appearing for this year's NEET UG.

The committee, led by a former UPSC Chairman and three academicians, has now decided that these students will be given two options — either to accept the score that they were originally awarded, without the grace marks, or re-appear for the exam on June 23.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) and the Union Education Ministry formed the expert committee.

It comprised of one member from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), one from the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), and two members from the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).

The committee's decision was based on a normalization formula picked by NTA from a 2018 Supreme Court judgment regarding a similar incident in the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT).

The normalization formula adjusted the candidate’s score based on the time lost and the answering efficiency.

The Supreme Court, on its part, has allowed the re-exam to be conducted for the affected 1,563 candidates.

The court stated that the results of those who do not wish to re-appear will be declared based on their actual marks.

The apex court also reiterated that it would not halt the counselling process, emphasizing that if the exam proceeds, everything should continue as planned.

The central government informed the Supreme Court that it has decided to cancel the grace marks awarded to the 1,563 NEET-UG 2024 candidates.

These students will be given an option to take a re-test or their result will be calculated on marks obtained without grace marks.

This decision is expected to bring clarity and fairness to the NEET UG 2024 process, ensuring that all students are evaluated on an equal footing.

Announced on June 4, the results drew attention for the inflated number of students scoring perfect marks (720/720), a ten day advanced result declaration, alleged paper leak and some students being awarded grace marks for loss of time, taking their scores to 718 and 719.

All these issues were raised by students and some NEET experts/ tutors on social media immediately after the result declaration.

While the NTA has repeatedly stated that the inflated number of toppers has been due to the increased number of registered students, grace marks due to loss of time and an easy question, NTA Director General Subodh Kumar Singh also attributed the unusually high number of top rankers (67) to a relatively easier paper this year.

This is the first time there have been 67 toppers for NEET UG. Since 2019, there haven’t been more than three toppers in any year of NEET UG, which is the single gateway for admission to all MBBS programs in the country.

In 2019 and 2020, there was one topper each. There were three toppers in 2021, one in 2022, and two last year.

17 + 6 + 44 = 67 Record toppers

NTA claims that 17 students were getting a 720/720 score and six students out of the 1,563 candidates were awarded ‘grace marks’ ended up in the top ranks.

In addition to this, a total of 44 other students got crowned with AIR 1 as they got an answer to a physics question wrong – and received “grace marks” for that.

As per NTA, a multiple-choice Physics question on atoms had an incorrect statement in an old NCERT book.

However, on May 29, NTA released its provisional answer key which showed that Option 1 is correct, and that was challenged by 13,373 students who claimed that NTA’s answer did not match with old NCERT books.

The NTA states that the question paper was drafted from the new NCERT book.

This decision saw 44 candidates have their scores boosted from 715 to a perfect 720, making them among the unprecedented number of NEET-UG toppers this year.

Due to these two added scenarios, the total number of toppers increased – 17 students were believed to get AIR 1, to which 6 students were added due to grace marks of time loss and 44 students were then added due to the wrong Physics question.

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