By Barsha Misra
Chennai: After the Madhya Pradesh High Court, now a Division bench of the Madras High Court has dismissed a plea seeking re-examination of the National Eligibility-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2025.While the petitioners claimed that their examination was disrupted due to the heavy rainfall and poor management by the exam centre, the HC bench, comprising the HC bench Division bench comprising Justices J Nisha Banu and M Jothiraman, dismissed the plea, noting that conducting a re-examination would severely affect more than two million candidates.The Court also took note of the factual enquiry conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and also considered the statistical analysis carried out by an independent expert committee. This analysis also confirmed that the alleged power outage did not materially affected the candidates’ performance.Accordingly, the HC bench observed, “This Court is of the opinion that it is crucial to uphold the integrity of the educational assessments in conducting examinations and this Court cannot sit in an appellate jurisdiction against the considered decision of the speaking order passed by the NTA, after field verification of examination centre and statistical analysis by an independent expert committee with no affiliation to the NTA, unless such decision is demonstrated to be manifestly arbitrary, mala fide or illegal. In such circumstances, if any re-examination is permitted, the same would severely affect more than two million candidates. Therefore, we do not find any reason to interfere with the order impugned and the writ appeal lacks merit and the same is liable to be dismissed.”Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that last month, a single bench of the Madras High Court also dismissed a plea seeking re-examination of the National Eligibility-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET) while observing that if any re-exam was permitted on trivial grounds, the same would seriously affect the level playing field of around 22 lakh candidates.This group of students had mentioned in their plea that due to storm and heavy rainfall, there had been a power outage at PM Shri Kendriya Vidyalaya CRPF-Avadi, Chennai, which was their examination centre, from approximately 3.00 PM to 4.15 PM on the day of the exam i.e. May 4, 2025. In their affidavit submitted before the HC, these candidates had also claimed that there were no backup facilities such as generators or inverters and therefore, they had to write the exam under poor lighting conditions. Since rainwater entered the exam hall, it caused further disruption as the students were allegedly asked to move from their assigned seats. They had also claimed that the examination center did not provide any compensatory time to them.Before the Division bench of the HC, the counsel for the appellants submitted that the grievance of the appellants was not merely the occurrence of power outage, but, a complete breakdown of exam conditions from 3.00 p.m. to 4.15 p.m. including a lack of lighting due to power failure caused due to heavy rainfall and darkened skies and gross inequality in exam conditions compared to other exam cities.The counsel also argued that the report of the NTA was not fair, complete and conclusive, due to material and factual inaccuracies, incomplete findings and lack of contemporaneous objective evidence, particularly CCTV footage. He submitted that in spite of the power outage, the exam centre did not provide any compensatory time to the candidates and did not arrange for any power backup.On the other hand, the Additional Solicitor General contended that even though there was a brief power outage, there was no impact upon the performance of the candidates, as the exam was conducted during the daytime. He denied that the candidates were moved from their assigned seats and claimed that the disruption was minor and it was seen from the screenshots of the CCTV footage, which he placed before the Court.The footage showed that the exam rooms had large windows with glass panes that allowed ample ambient daylight to enter. Therefore, the ASG argued that even during the short period between power outage and generator restoration, the rooms remained sufficiently illuminated due to natural light and the candidates continued writing without interruption and therefore, the lighting conditions remained conductive to the fair conduct of the exam.He further submitted before the Court that out of thirteen appellants, one of the appellants had attempted to attend 179 questions out of 180 questions. Similarly, five appellants attempted to answer more than 140 out of 180 questions. Therefore, he prayed to dismiss the appeal.On 10.06.2025, the Court had directed NTA to produce the CCTV footage of the exam hall in question and in compliance with the order, NTA filed a report on 15.06.2025 along with screenshots of the CCTV footage of various classrooms at the centre dated 04.05.2025 concerning the NEET UG 2025 examination conducted at PM …