NEW DELHI: In a significant setback for the National Testing Agency (NTA), the Supreme Court has ordered a manual evaluation of a NEET-UG 2025 answer sheet after a candidate alleged that his question paper had been stapled incorrectly, resulting in a disordered sequence of questions.
The Court’s directive comes amid mounting criticism of the NTA’s handling of student grievances, particularly concerns over alleged errors in exam booklets and discrepancies in scoring. Several candidates have claimed that when they raised such issues, they were told to seek redress “from the courts.”
Despite repeated complaints, the NTA has maintained that its processes are robust and foolproof. However, the Supreme Court took a serious view in this specific case, dismissing the NTA’s argument that the irregular stapling caused no real harm.
The issue was first brought to wider attention on June 11, titled “Students raise serious concerns over errors in NEET-UG papers”, in which candidates reported receiving booklets with jumbled pages. Many said they inadvertently marked incorrect answers due to a mismatch between the questions and the standard OMR answer sheet.
When asked about such complaints, the NTA had previously responded: “There are four series of question papers. The jumbling is thus of four types. There are four sets of keys. These are applicable to the respective series.” However, candidates pointed out that this explanation failed to address cases involving physical errors such as mis-stapling or printing faults.
“We were told nothing could be done and that we should take legal action if we had an issue,” said a student from Odisha.
In the present case before the apex court, the petitioner described the sequencing in his paper as highly erratic—starting with questions 1 to 27, jumping to 54 to 81, then reverting to 28 to 53, followed by 118 to 151, 82 to 117, and finally 152 to 180. He argued that such a disordered layout made it nearly impossible to align the questions with the standard serial OMR sheet, which follows a 1 to 180 format.
In its August 5 order, the Supreme Court noted:
“We have heard learned ASG appearing for the respondent(s). She has submitted a copy of the question paper to explain that the mistake was merely in the stapling, which led to the erroneous sequencing. She submitted that this could not have caused any prejudice to the petitioner.”
However, the Court added:
“In order to satisfy ourselves, we direct that the petitioner’s paper be evaluated manually, and the result of the evaluation be placed on the record. This exercise shall be completed within one week.”
