Summary
The Supreme Court set aside the blanket grant of 196 grace marks to all candidates who took NEET-UG 2018 in Tamil. Awarding full marks for 49 disputed translations irrespective of answers or attempts arbitrarily advantaged one group. The bilingual instructions made the English version controlling in ambiguity. Accurate translation remained necessary, and NTA was directed to conduct examinations from 2019-20 using the stated translation safeguards.
Issues
- Whether mistranslated questions justified awarding full marks to every Tamil-medium candidate irrespective of individual answers.
- What directions should govern future bilingual examinations.
Held
- The examination instructions expressly made the English version final in cases of translation ambiguity, and the Court found the discrepancies discussed could have been resolved by reference to that version. This did not excuse inaccurate translation. (¶¶ 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16)
- The High Court’s blanket award ignored whether individual candidates attempted the questions or answered them correctly. It produced arbitrary comparative results and undue advantage without independent expert evaluation. (¶¶ 18, 19, 20)
- The decisions on incorrect answer keys did not support such indiscriminate grace marks; the cited relief protected candidates who had actually supplied correct answers rather than conferring a group advantage. (¶¶ 19, 21)
- The High Court judgment was set aside. NTA was directed to conduct NEET-UG from 2019-20 with bilingual papers translated using the safeguards described in its affidavit, including subject-expert and reverse-translation checks. (¶¶ 16, 17, 22, 23)
Result
Appeals allowed. High Court’s 10 July 2018 blanket grace-mark award set aside; directions issued for NTA’s conduct of NEET-UG from 2019-20 with the specified translation safeguards.