The HC order comes days ahead of the result for the second round of seat allotment for the all India quota for the admission to the MBBS and BDS courses to be declared on July 12
The counselling for the admission to the undergraduate medical courses under the All India and Tamil Nadu quota seats will come to a standstill in the view of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court asking the CBSE to grant 196 grace marks for the 49 erroneously translated questions in the Tamil version of the entrance exam. The court directed the board to publish a revised ranking list in two weeks.
A division bench comprising Justices CT Selvam and AM Basheer Ahamed, hearing a PIL filed by CPI (M) MP TK Rangarajan, has stayed all the current proceedings.
"The list of qualified candidates shall be kept in abeyance as would the counselling sessions," it said.
Dr Sanyam Bhardwaj, director of academic and NEET, CBSE said, "We haven't got the court order yet. We will take the legal opinion and we will discuss it and then take necessary action." When asked about the court direction to publish the revised ranking list, he told DNA that he did not know whether the order was meant only to Tamil Nadu or for the entire nation.
The HC order comes days ahead of the result for the second round of seat allotment for the all India quota for the admission to the MBBS and BDS courses to be declared on July 12. In TN, the first phase of the counselling is underway for the management quota seats till July 18.
In Tamil Nadu, 1.14 lakh students gave the NEET this year, of which 45,336 students (39.6%) qualified. Of all the students, there were 24,000 students who wrote in Tamil medium. "All students who had taken NEET in Tamil will now get an additional 196 marks out of 720, whether they had attempted these wrong questions or not. We found both the questions as well as their answers wrong. For example, the word Cheeta was given just the Tamil spelling as 'Seetha'," said Shaji Chellam, counsel for the petitioner.
The NEET cut off this year was 119 for students from the general category, and 96 for SC, ST and OBC students. With the 196 grace marks added, many Tamil medium students may become eligible for government institutes. All students who got more than -77 marks in the general category, and more than -100 marks in the reserved categories, will clear the cut-off.
Tamil Nadu's counselling selection committee secretary G Selvarajan said that they would discuss with the state government and the CBSE before taking any decision.
Tamil Nadu has 3,328 medical seats in government and private medical colleges under the state quota. Apart from this, there are 516 seats for students under management quota. Over 2,447 students have already been admitted to 22 government medical colleges in the first round of counselling which is underway.
Pointing out the errors in the English translations of 49 questions in physics, chemistry and biology sections, Rangarajan said the students who took the exams in Tamil would clearly be affected out of negative marks only because of the errors made by the CBSE.
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