NEET-UG 2025: MP High Court Sets Aside Direction For Re-Test Due To Power Outage, Asks NTA To Ensure Proper Arrangements In Future
The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Monday (July 14) allowed the writ appeals filed by the National Testing Agency against a Single Judge's direction to conduct re-test of the NEET-UG 2025 exam for candidates affected by power outage at the centres in Indore and Ujjain.
However, the division bench of Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Binod Kumar Dwivedi further directed NTA, along with the local authorities, to ensure that all necessary arrangements for conducting examinations are in place, in the future.
"In order to avoid such a situation in future, NTA as well as the local administration of each district are directed to ensure that all the measures, especially the continuity of power supply by way of regular supply or by way of alternate mode of supply, proper sitting arrangement, availability of air and cooling etc. It is the responsibility of the local administration to prepare the list of centres which can be used for these types of important examinations by any of the agencies", the bench stated.
The students had claimed that on the day of the exam, there was heavy rain and thunderstorm, causing a long power outage. It was alleged that there was no proper power backup, making it hard for the students to attempt the exam. The students contended that the local administration failed to provide adequate backup lighting, such as generators or inverters, severely hampering their ability to attempt the paper.
However, the NTA submitted the collector's report, according to which most centres managed to restore lighting through alternative modes like emergency lights, candles, etc. NTA submitted that out of the 49 centres in Indore, 10 experienced no outage, 19 had functional generators, and 18 had sufficient natural light despite a power cut. Only two centres experienced a brief outage of less than two minutes.
Noting the unforseeable nature of the weather conditions, the division bench stated, "The situation, which occurred suddenly, was beyond the control of NTA as well as local administration because normally Monsoon never reaches to eastern part of Madhya Pradesh in the first week of May, therefore, no one could anticipate rainfall and thunder in peak summer days. Suddenly, the weather changed, and heavy storms and rain started, in fact nobody was prepared for that, therefore, it was unfortunate for the students that they had to attend the examination during such unpredicted disturbance".
The court noted that only 70 out of the 27,264 students had filed the original writ petitions. The fact that NTA constituted an expert committee showed that it did not act as an adversary but responded responsibly by initiating a technical review. "Therefore, NTA has not contested this case as an adversary litigant as rightly said by Shri Tushar Mehta, learned Solicitor General of India", the bench noted.
Relying on the Supreme Court judgment Aditi v National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences, the bench deemed this case to be unfit for a re-test. The court also observed, "There is no guarantee that even if the re-test is done in all conducive circumstances or atmosphere, they will secure higher marks than this examination".
Background:
The issue first came up before Single Judge bench of Justice Subodh Abhyankar, who had stayed the declaration of NEET UG result. However, upon requests from other candidates, the court allowed the declaration of the result except for those from affected centres.
The single bench in its final order had directed the NTA to conduct a re-test.
Challenging this order, the NTA approached the division bench, arguing that a retest would be impractical. The NTA submitted that there are no guidelines from the NTA for conducting a re-test. It added that re-test will delay the academic session.
The petitioner, however, maintained that if a re-test proves unfeasible, the NTA should at least compensate the students with grace marks or other appropriate measures, given the circumstances.