‘Cannot Put Career of Candidates in Jeopardy’: SC Rejects Plea Seeking Postponement of NEET-PG Exam

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea seeking the postponement of the NEET-PG examination, scheduled for August 11, which claimed that candidates have been allocated cities that are highly inconvenient for them to reach.

A bench comprising CJI D Y Chandrachud along with Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra stated it cannot jeopardize the careers of two lakh students for the sake of five students.

“How can we postpone such an exam? Mr. Sanjay Hegde, nowadays people just come asking to postpone the exam. It’s not a perfect world. We are not academic experts,” the bench remarked.

“As a matter of principle, we will not reschedule the exam. There are two lakh students and four lakh parents who will weep over the weekend if we postpone it. We cannot put the careers of so many candidates in jeopardy. We do not know who is behind these petitions,” it added.

The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-Postgraduate exam, initially set for June 23, had already been postponed as a “precautionary measure” due to alleged irregularities in other competitive exams.

The petitioners, however, contended that the rescheduled date of August 11 presented significant challenges, especially given the late allocation of test cities on July 31.

The petitioners argued that the short notice left many candidates struggling to secure travel arrangements, particularly due to the high cost of last-minute airfare and the unavailability of train tickets.

They expressed concerns about the exam being conducted in two batches, fearing that one batch might receive a more difficult set of questions than the other. To address this, they requested that the normalization formula, designed to ensure fairness across different question sets, be disclosed in advance to eliminate any suspicion of arbitrariness in the process.

Appearing for the petitioners, Advocate on Record (AOR) Anas Tanwir contended that the lack of transparency and the difficulties posed by distant test centers could put many students at a disadvantage. Vishal Soren, one of the petitioners, proposed that conducting the exam in a single batch would create a uniform testing environment for all candidates.

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