The Delhi High Court has issued a notice to the National Testing Agency (NTA) in response to a NEET-UG 2025 candidate鈥檚 petition seeking compensatory marks, citing mental distress caused by a faulty biometric verification process at the examination centre.
On June 20, Justice Prathiba M Singh asked the NTA to file a reply to the petition, which alleges that the biometric verification system failed during the pre-exam authentication at Trishla Devi Kanohar Lal Balika Inter College in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. The candidate appeared for the exam on May 4.
According to the plea, the petitioner was not immediately allowed entry into the exam hall due to a technical issue and was required to submit a written application seeking permission to enter. He was reportedly allowed into the examination hall just five minutes before the test began.
The plea further states that while the examination was in progress, the candidate was asked to leave the hall again for biometric verification and was made to submit another written application, both in English and Hindi, to the centre superintendent. This caused significant mental disturbance, according to the petitioner, impacting his performance.
The candidate, who reportedly scored 98.86 percentile, has also requested the preservation of all relevant records, including CCTV footage, logbook entries, and other registers from the exam centre.
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In its order, the court said: 鈥淟et the contentions in the writ petition be rebutted by the NTA by filing a counter affidavit, specifically in respect of the allegations relating to the biometric verification. In addition, the CCTV recordings, log book entries and any other registers at the test centre shall also be preserved, subject to further orders of this court.鈥
The petitioner鈥檚 counsel submitted that compensatory marks could be granted in line with a previous Supreme Court ruling. The court noted it would consider the matter after reviewing the NTA鈥檚 response.
Given that NEET counselling is tentatively scheduled to begin on July 1, the court has listed the matter for further hearing on June 27.
(With inputs from PTI)