The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to grant interim relief to two NEET-UG 2025 candidates from Madhya Pradesh who sought provisional permission to participate in the counselling process, citing power outages at their examination centres during the test.
A bench comprising Justices P.S. Narasimha and A.S. Chandurkar refused to allow provisional participation in counselling for petitioners Navya Nayak and S. Sai Priya but agreed to hear their pleas on July 25.
The students had moved the apex court challenging the July 14 order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which denied their request for a re-test. They argued that technical disruptions due to power failures in Indore and Ujjain severely hampered their ability to write the exam.
Their counsel urged the court to allow them conditional participation in the ongoing counselling process, given the notification for it had already been issued.
However, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the National Testing Agency (NTA), opposed the plea, stressing that allowing a re-test would set a precedent that could impact lakhs of other students who had appeared under similar or more difficult conditions.
The Supreme Court, while acknowledging the matter’s seriousness, refrained from passing any interim orders and deferred the decision pending further hearing.
Earlier, a single-judge bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court had directed the NTA to conduct a re-test for students affected by power outages. However, this order was overturned by a division bench, which, while setting aside the direction for a re-test, cautioned the NTA against such lapses in future.
