New Delhi: The Supreme Court Friday refused to entertain a plea which sought quashing of the answer keys of some questions in the NEET(UG)-2019 examination saying that an expert body has duly applied its mind and revised answers were issued.
The top court, however, allowed the four Hyderabad based students who have challenged the answer keys, to approach the high court for the relief.
It said that courts are not experts in each and every subject and time has come when the interference in this arena should be stopped.
A vacation bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Surya Kant allowed the four medical aspirants to withdraw their plea and granted them liberty to approach the high court with their grievances.
At the outset, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the students, said that wrong answer key were given by the National Testing Agency which conducted the exam on May 5.
He said the five questions having four marks each had more than one correct answers or had an answer which was different from answer key issued by the NTA.
“All multiple choice answers cannot be scrutinized by the this court. We are not experts. We think somewhere some line needs to be drawn,” the bench said.
It said that interfering with the answer key would mean that Supreme Court has become an appellate body above the NTA.
The bench said that after the answer keys were issued to the questions asked in the May 5 examination, several students had made representation about the correct answers and subsequently revised answer key were issued.
“We see, an expert body has applied its mind and revised answer key was issued. In some cases, the answers were corrected. There does not seems to be a case of mala fide intent,” it said.
Singhvi said that students career will be affected if the answers key were not corrected and suggested that an expert body should be constituted which shall look into the correct answer keys as the counselling is yet to start from June 19.v
