The Rajasthan High Court has dismissed a set of petitions seeking re-examination or compensatory marks for NEET-UG 2025 candidates affected by power outages during the exam in Sikar district, stating that such disruptions do not warrant retesting or alterations to the results.
A single-judge bench of Justice Sameer Jain ruled on Monday that the grievances lacked sufficient merit and could not justify revisiting the outcome of a national-level examination involving nearly 22 lakh candidates.
The petitions were filed by 31 candidates who appeared at various centres in Sikar, which reportedly faced power failures lasting between 5 and 28 minutes on May 4 due to inclement weather. The court acknowledged these disruptions but held that isolated grievances from a statistically negligible number of examinees did not justify large-scale relief.
Quoting the legal maxim de minimis non curat lex—the law does not concern itself with trifles—the bench noted that the number of affected students was minimal compared to the 31,787 who appeared from Sikar, and the wider pool of 22 lakh test-takers across India.
The court also noted that many candidates from the affected centres performed well, with scores ranging between 550 and 600 marks, and that an Expert Committee report found no material discrepancy in the number of questions attempted by students from disrupted centres versus unaffected ones.
The bench rejected allegations of irregularities in question sequencing and complaints about non-functional wall clocks, observing that there was no regulatory requirement mandating chronological question order and that no substantial evidence of academic prejudice was presented.
Addressing the demand for compensatory or bonus marks, Justice Jain distinguished the case from previous NEET-UG rulings, including the 2024 examination, where such relief was granted due to the distribution of incorrect question paper series—not due to power cuts or force majeure events.
“The interest of approximately 22 lakh candidates cannot be sacrificed to provide a remedy to grievances made by a handful of candidates, moreover unsupported by cogent and substantial evidence of prejudice,” the court held.
