The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed petitions filed by four medical aspirants who challenged their National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) results, finding no discrepancies in the testing agency’s evaluation.
A division bench comprising Justices N B Suryawanshi and A D Shinde imposed a penalty of Rs 5,000 on each petitioner for making unsubstantiated claims. The ruling was issued after the judges examined the physical Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) response sheets in court alongside all involved parties and confirmed that the scores recorded by the National Testing Agency matched the original answer keys.
Verification Process and Withdrawal
The four candidates—Hricha Deshpande, Soham Gavte, Atharva Jagtap, and Rahul Aruna Nag—had requested a re-verification of their answer sheets, alleging that their official scorecards did not reflect their actual performance. On July 23, the court had ordered the NTA to present the original OMR sheets to address the alleged mismatches.
During Thursday’s hearing, upon learning that the court was not inclined to grant them relief, two of the candidates chose to withdraw their petitions, according to Deputy Solicitor General of India Ajay Talhar.
Background of the Re-Test
The nationwide entrance examination is used to determine admissions to undergraduate medical programs. The June examination challenged by the petitioners was conducted as a re-test following reports that the paper for the initial test held in May had leaked.
