Chennai: The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed petitions seeking re-examination of the NEET-UG 2025 for candidates who faced power outage at test centres stating that the National Testing Agency (NTA) cannot be ordered to re-conduct the medical entrance test.
Around 22 lakh candidates across the country appeared for the exam and ordering re-examination for some students would have a serious impact on the others, the court observed.
The NEET-UG was conducted on May 4. Due to heavy rains in Chennai, many exam centres were hit by power cuts. Complaining that they were unable to write the exam properly due to poor lighting conditions, 16 students of three exam centres had moved court. A total of 13 students, who appeared from Avadi Kendriya Vidyalaya School centre, two from Kundrathur Government Higher Secondary School centre, and one from K K Nagar Padma Seshadri School centre filed petitions in the Madras High Court.
In the petitions, the candidates requested to cancel the exam and conduct a re-test. On May 16, the Madras High Court, which heard the case, had ordered an interim stay on declaration of the NEET-UG results till June 2 stating that opportunity should be given to these students to present their case.
During the hearing, the NTA explained that an investigation into the power outage issue revealed that the candidates were not affected stating, it could not conduct re-test as they had answered most of the questions. Subsequently, Judge C Kumarappan adjourned the hearing for June 6.
On Friday, judge dismissed the petitions, stating that the decision taken following NTA's investigation was fair and ordering to re-conduct exam for some students would have a serious impact on 22 lakh candidates across the country who had written the test on May 4.
