The Madurai bench of Madras High Court has ordered the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to award 196 grace marks for the students who had attempted National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2018 in Tamil – since 49 questions in the Tamil question paper had been mistranslated. The court has also ordered CBSE to release a revised rank list based on this order within two weeks.

This order was issued based on a petition filed by TK Rangarajan, a CPI (M) Rajya Sabha MP.

The MP had said that nearly one-third of the question paper was translated wrongly in Tamil and had sought the court to direct the admissions to be held either based solely on the Class XII marks of the students or award 196 grace marks to students who had attempted the exam in Tamil.

After the judgement came in, the MP told TNM that students who are aggrieved by NEET’s mistranslation had been vindicated. “The court has asked for 4 grace marks to be given per mistranslated question which is 196 marks for 49 questions. As I am an MP, members of the Students Federation of India and many others had approached me and so I decided to go to court,” Rangarajan said.

The MP added that it is now up to the TN government and CBSE to decide whether the admission process will be suspended and the counselling will be held once again.

A bench of Justices CT Selvam and AM Basheer Ahamed had on July 6 pulled up the CBSE for releasing the results despite knowing about the PIL, observing "Why did they do so?"

Hitting out at CBSE, the bench stated that the Board was acting autocratic when it came to errors in the Tamil version of NEET. 

In response to the CBSE’s submission, the bench observed, "How do you decide the right answers for the questions based on majority view? CBSE is accepting even wrong answers under the pretext of majority decision. How is that in Bihar state so many students got through the examination?"

NEET was conducted across India on May 6. Around 24000 students took the exam in Tamil.

The rank list for medical counselling in Tamil Nadu was released by the TN department of health and family welfare on June 28. The first round of counselling for admissions to TN medical colleges began on July 1 an ended on July 7.

The cut-off under NEET for unreserved category this year stood at 119 and for OBC, SC and ST stood at 96 out of the total 720 marks.