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Rectify injustice meted out to NEET aspirant: Supreme Court to NTA
The bench of justices Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and AS Bopanna, however, directed NTA to consider steps to be taken to rectify the injustice done to the candidate within a week.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to rectify the injustice meted out to a disabled medical aspirant who was denied an additional one hour at the NEET-UG 2021 and directed that in future, the rights and entitlements of students with disability appearing in the competitive examinations should be listed out clearly in the information bulletin.
The petitioner, Avni Prakash, who hails from Maharashtra, suffered from dysgraphia, commonly referred to as ‘writer’s cramp’ and had a certificate of disability issued by a recognised hospital. Dysgraphia causes impaired handwriting and demonstrates inconsistent handwriting, poor spelling and spacing, transcription difficulties, and incoherence.
Due to the action of NTA, she had slipped in the overall merit list prepared for persons with disabilities and demanded for an opportunity to give the examination again. The top court refused this prayer, realising that such an order will set a wrong precedent for an examination such as NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) taken by nearly 1.6 million candidates across the country.
The bench of justices Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and AS Bopanna, however, directed NTA to consider steps to be taken to rectify the injustice done to the candidate within a week and convey the same to the Registry of the Supreme Court within two weeks. The option of what is to be done was left to NTA even as the bench suggested extrapolation of marks awarded to the candidate, compensatory marks, or by adopting a “no negative marks” policy.
The top court was convinced that the suffering caused to the petitioner was a consequence of inadequate knowledge at the designated examination centre with regard to facilities available to persons with disability (PwD) students coupled by an element of ambiguity in the instructions framed in the NEET Bulletin 2021.
“In the future, the first respondent (NTA) shall ensure that provisions which are made at the NEET in terms of the rights and entitlements available under the right to persons with disabilities (RPwD) Act 2016 are clarified in the NEET Bulletin by removing ambiguity, as noticed in the present case,” the bench held.
In the present case, the apex court left it open for NTA to relax the upper age criteria applicable to persons with benchmark disability.
Holding NTA accountable for its mistake, the bench said, “Responsibility and power without accountability are an anathema to our Constitution…It is no answer for an authority bound by the dicta of law and the Constitution to throw up its hands in despair, instead of attempting to remedy the injustice which is caused to a student. A judge cannot ignore that behind the statistics is a human face, reflecting the aspirations, joy and tears of a student and her family.”
The order noted August 2018 guidelines issued by the ministry of social justice and empowerment that states that every policy should have flexibility to accommodate the specific needs of PwD on a case-to-case basis. Even the NEET Bulletin 2021 provided for compensatory time of an additional hour for such candidates. Yet, the candidate’s paper was forcibly taken away at the completion of three hours and when she protested, the invigilators sought production of certificate of disability, which the court said was a requirement at the time of getting admission. The petitioner did possess a certificate of disability issued by the LTMG Sion Hospital, Paediatric Neurodevelopment Centre.
The court said, “For effective participation of the students with disabilities in the society, which undoubtedly is the salutary object of the legislation, the safeguards which are provided by the law must be duly enforced and any breach of entitlement must be answerable at law.”
The petitioner secured an All India Rank of 1,721 out of 2,684 candidates who qualified in the PwD category. In relation to Maharashtra, she secured rank of 249 out of 390 candidates in the same category.
The bench observed, “Individual injustices originating in a wrongful denial of rights and entitlements prescribed under the law cannot be sent into oblivion on the ground that these are a necessary consequence of a competitive examination… The number of cases where such injustices take place maybe a few or more than that, but it cannot be ignored that for a student who is made to suffer, the consequence is indeed serious.”
Before approaching the top court, the petitioner had appealed to the Bombay high court, which dismissed her petition on October 29. She approached the top court on November 10 in appeal against this order. The petitioner had cleared her Class XII this year with an aggregate of 87.4% marks. The NTA, during the course of the proceedings in the case, informed the bench that the petitioner had attempted 84 out of 180 questions in her NEET entrance and was awarded 166 out of 720 marks.
