Madras High Court Rejects Plea for NEET UG 2025 Re-exam, Cites Impact on Over 22 Lakh Candidates
In a significant ruling, the Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal seeking a re-examination of NEET UG 2025, emphasizing that such a decision would disrupt the futures of over 22 lakh medical aspirants who appeared for the exam on May 4.
The appeal was filed by S Sai Priya and 11 other students, challenging a June 6 order that had earlier rejected multiple petitions demanding a stay on the result declaration by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and a direction to conduct a re-exam for candidates who allegedly faced power outages at four centres in Chennai.
A division bench comprising Justice J Nisha Banu and Justice M Jothiraman upheld the earlier verdict, stating that there was no substantial evidence of unfairness at the affected centres.
Human and Statistical Validation:
The bench cited that the integrity of the NEET UG examination was maintained through a layered system of oversight, including:
Centre Superintendents
Invigilators
NTA-appointed Observers
City Coordinators
The NTA had carried out a detailed field verification and an independent statistical analysis of candidate performance data. According to the court, this analysis showed no statistically significant difference in the number of questions attempted at the centres in question when compared with others in Thiruvallur District.
Key Observations by the Court:
No material impact on candidate performance due to the alleged power outage.
Independent expert committee found the data to be consistent across centres.
Courts cannot overrule the expert findings of the NTA unless they are proven to be arbitrary, biased, or illegal.
The court stressed the importance of maintaining the integrity of such a high-stakes, time-sensitive national exam, and warned that allowing a re-exam would unfairly affect millions of candidates who participated under standard conditions.
“We find no grounds to interfere with the order. The writ appeal is without merit and is therefore dismissed,” the bench ruled.
Related Development:
In a contrasting move, the Madhya Pradesh High Court recently issued a stay on the NEET UG retest for candidates in Indore and Ujjain, who had reported similar disruptions due to power cuts during the May 4 exam. The matter remains under review.
