NEET: HC to hear emergency plea on OMR sheet irregularities today

CHENNAI: A city-based girl who wrote the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) this year has approached the Madras High Court alleging irregularities in disclosing the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) answer sheet.

The petitioner named KM Bhavamirthne’s counsel mentioned the case before Justice R Subramaniam on Monday to hear it as an emergency one. The judge agreed to hear the case on Tuesday.

The petitioner sought direction from the Union government and National Testing Agency (NTA) to produce her Original OMR answer sheet and office copy of the OMR sheet as well as to allot an MBBS seat in any of the TN medical colleges.

According to the petitioner, she appeared for the NEET exam on July 17 and to her shock and surprise, she found that the OMR answer sheet, which was given along with the answer key to her on August 31, was not the one that was filled by her during the examination.

She further submitted that though she answered 187 questions out of the 200, the National Testing Agency (NTA), which had conducted the exam, had issued an OMR answer sheet saying that she had answered only 140 questions. The petitioner submitted that she was confident that she had performed well in the examination and that due to the confusion in the OMR sheet, she would be restrained from joining MBBS.

Citing that the NEET exam results will be published on September 9, the petitioner noted that she was confident that she would have scored more than 600 marks. “Hence I am put into irreparable loss and hardship,” she added.