New Delhi, Jun 12: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to declare the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test (NEET) results, staying the Madras High Court's restrain order.
Though the apex court did not fix any date for the declaration of results, the CBSE began the process, hoping to announce the test results “within two weeks.”
About 12 lakh medical aspirants took the test, conducted by the CBSE across the country on May 7.
“We will try to announce the results as early as possible. The process, however, will take some time to complete,” a CBSE official told DH.
The Madras High Court had on May 24 put an interim stay on the declaration of the NEET results hearing a batch of petitions filed by some students who had claimed that a uniform question paper was not given during the test and there was a vast difference between the questions in English and Tamil, though the papers in English and Hindi were same.
The CBSE approached the apex court on June 9, seeking an immediate stay on the Madras High Court order. In its petition before the apex court, the CBSE said the entire schedule of counselling and subsequent admissions for medical courses through NEET had gone “haywire” due the Madras High Court's interim stay on the publication of test results.
"On one ground we are inclined to stay the High Court's order. What indirectly this order is doing is that it is diluting the schedule fixed by the Supreme Court," a vacation bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices P C Pant and Deepak Gupta observed while hearing the CBSE's plea.
The bench took note of the contentions of Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Maninder Singh, appearing for the CBSE, and other petitioners who challenged the May 24 order of the Madras High Court on the ground that it was against the spirit of the order passed by the Supreme Court in which schedule for holding the NEET 2017 was fixed.
"In view of the above, the interim order is stayed and it is directed that the authorities concerned will proceed further with declaration of results for the NEET 2017 examination,” the bench held.
The vacation bench, however, made it clear that the declaration of the results as well as the subsequent counselling and admission through NEET 2017 would be subject to the decision of the apex court in the matter pending before it.
It also “requested” the High Courts not to entertain pleas in the matters relating to the NEET 2017 and listed the matter for further hearing after the summer vacation in the Supreme Court as the ASG brought to the notice of the vacation bench that various High Courts were entertaining pleas in the matters relating to the entrance test held in May this year.
A group of NEET aspirants had also moved the Gujarat High Court, seeking an order for holding of the entrance test afresh with uniform question papers claiming that the NEET 2017 questions in the English and Gujarati languages were different.
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