NEET UG 2025: Supreme Court Dismisses Pleas Seeking Reexamination For Candidates Who Faced Power Outage At Centres

The Supreme Court today(July 25) dismissed two petitions filed by NEET-UG 2025 candidates, who suffered a power outage in centres in Madhya Pradesh, seeking a re-examination.

The Court refused to interfere with the Madhya Pradesh High Court Division Bench's judgment which refused the plea for re-test. The Court opined that the High Court has examined the issue from all possible aspects, including the report of an independent Expert Committee.

However, the bench comprising Justice PS Narasimha and Justice AS Chandurkar directed  that those students who are eligible for counselling should be allowed to register for the same and participate in the ongoing process.

The candidates approached the Court against the July 14 order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court refusing to order a re-test for them.  Today, when the matter was taken up, Justice Narasimha stated that the findings of the High Court are correct and that it is not in the hands of the Court to pass orders for re-examination, as it is the prerogative of the NTA.

The day before yesterday, a bench refused to pass any interim relief, seeking a stay on the counselling, which has already begun.

A single judge of the High Court had directed the NTA to conduct a re-test of the NEET-UG 2025 exam for candidates affected by a 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.

But, later, 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 a 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.