Alakh Pandey, CEO of the ed-tech company Physics Wallah, has petitioned the Supreme Court to contest the National Testing Agency's (NTA) decision to grant grace marks to multiple candidates who participated in this year's National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for undergraduate medical admissions.

The writ petition, filed on June 9, was presented by Advocate J Sai Deepak yesterday before a vacation bench of the Supreme Court for urgent consideration. The bench, led by Justice Vikram Nath, advised the lawyer to bring the matter to the Registry's attention so that the listing request could be processed through the Chief Justice of India.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a notice regarding another petition seeking the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2024 test, held on May 5, due to an alleged paper leak. Noting that the integrity of the exam had been compromised, the Court requested a response from the NTA on the paper leak allegations by July 8. However, the Court declined the request to halt the counselling process. It is worth mentioning that this petition was filed before the results were announced on June 4.

Pandey's petition challenges the NTA's decision to award grace marks, describing it as "arbitrary." His lawyer argued that Pandey has gathered representations from around 20,000 students, indicating that 70 to 80 grace marks were randomly awarded to at least 1,500 students.

Another NEET candidate has filed a petition challenging the award of grace marks intended to compensate for the alleged loss of time during the exams. He argued that the "normalization formula" for awarding grace marks should, if applied, only account for the number of questions left unanswered in proportion to the lost time. Since each question carries equal marks, it is reasonable to assume equal time distribution for answering each question.

On June 9, another petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking to recall the NEET-UG 2024 results and conduct a fresh examination. The petitioners alleged arbitrariness in the awarding of grace marks and argued that the high scores of 718 and 719 out of 720 achieved by several students were "statistically impossible."

It is noteworthy that on June 8, the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the Union Education Ministry announced the formation of a four-member committee to review the results of over 1,500 candidates who were awarded "grace marks" to compensate for the "loss of time" experienced during this year's NEET (Undergraduate) exam.