NEET UG: Supreme Court Refuses To Stay Counselling, Lists Pleas Seeking Reexamination On Account Of Power Outage In MP Centres On Friday

The Supreme Court today(July 23) refused to pass any interim relief in two petitions filed by NEET-UG 2025 candidates, who suffered a power outage in centres in Madhya Pradesh. The candidates approached the Court against the July 14 order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court refusing to order a re-test for them.

A bench comprising Justice PS Narasimha and Justice AS Chandurkar, however, kept the petitions to be heard on Friday. A counsel, appearing for one of the petitioners, mentioned that the counselling notification has been issued. On this, Justice Narasimha asked: "What do you want us to do?" What interim order are you expecting?"

On this, the lady counsel replied that provisional permission may be given for aggrieved students to register for counselling. "My clients are trying to register in counselling, it is not permitted," she said. One of the other counsel clarified that the prayer is for reexamination, to which Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for Union, agreed. SG Mehta added that it will affect lakhs of students. He said that around 22 lakh students appeared for the exam.

Justice Narasimha responded: "In other words, you are asking for stay of counselling? Postponement of the counselling? That can't be done. As far as you are concerned, with respect to you people, what is to be done we will consider. But the interim direction cannot be to stay. Thousands will get affected...We will take it up on Friday, we will see what best can be done for you. We will list all matters on Friday." 

Earlier, an urgent mention was made before comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi for urgent listing. However, the bench refused, saying that there are several rounds of counselling and that the petitioners will have opportunities if they succeed in the case.

A single judge of the High Court had directed the National Testing Agency to conduct re-test of the NEET-UG 2025 exam for candidates affected by power outage at the centres in Indore and Ujjain. Since the petitioners were put at a disadvantage for no fault of theirs, the Court observed that a re-test was necessary. The single bench also observed that the counselling process will be subject to the re-test.

However, last week, a division bench set aside the single bench's decision. The division bench took note of a report of an expert committee which opined that even though there was power outage at some centres, there was sufficient natural light enabling the candidates to take the test. The court also noted that only 70 out of the 27,264 students had filed the original writ petitions.

In the second petition, similar issues have been raised in regards to the test conducted in Chennai.

Case Details: NAVYA NAYAK Vs NATIONAL TESTING AGENCY|SLP(C) No. 19807/2025 and S. SAI PRIYA AND ORS. v UNION OF INDIA AND ORS|SLP(C) No. 19661/2025