The Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court questioned the National Board of Examination for Medical Sciences (NBEMS) about the normalisation process used for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Exams for Postgraduate (NEET PG) exam in preparation of the state rank of in-service candidates, reported LiveLaw.
The court orally questioned the body as to how someone who’s rank was higher in the All India ranking, their rank drops in the state list after application of the normalisation process, orally remarking that the process seemed to defy logic. It thereafter listed the matter on please add date, please add today Friday, asking the body to show how they have worked the formula applied by them.
On December 3, the Executive Director, of NBEMS, explained the procedure of normalisation and the preparation of the merit list based on the NEET percentile, the All India Ranking, as well as the state ranking based on the NEET percentile and the raw score. However, on this day, the NBEMS prayed for some time to produce the calculation sheet concerning the preparation of normalisation and the preparation of the state rank of in-service candidates. Thereafter, the matter was listed for Thursday, December 5.
Dec 5 hearing
During the hearing, a division bench of Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Vinay Saraf at the outset said, “There is no challenge to the normalization process. We just want to look into how someone who was higher in the all India list, how do they become lower in the State list? That's all we are trying to verify”. Further, the court then asked, “Is it in public knowledge as to which one was the tougher shift? Who has been given benefit–shift 1 or shift 2 in normalisation?”
The respondent said that both are given the benefit. An official from NBEMS further said, “Marks were actually increased as per the directions given by the State Government.”The court orally asked asked the respondents, “Where you have done a state specific calculation, have you done normalization? Because what is defying logic is this...if someone in the entire process of normalisation is higher, both Candidate A and Candidate B have to be given 30% extra for this state service, suddenly becomes lower in rank. That is not understandable. That means either you did normalization for calculating All India Ranking but no normalization was state specific.”The respondent official from NBEMS submitted that they have also done state-specific normalisation. He further said, “We combined shift 1 and shift 2 candidates of whole 1 lakh population and we increased the marks as per the government provided list. We increased the marks and then taking it as actual marks obtained in the NEET PG exam for this particular state, we again rank them and after ranking them we created a percentile. We removed all the other Non-MP states and the remaining MP state remain as in order of….”
At this stage the court orally asked, “No. Tell me something. If somebody in the All India Ranking is higher, how does that person become junior when all you're doing is adding 30% benefit to both?”
“We are not able to understand. So, here the benefit accorded to both candidates is equal i.e. 30% hike in percentage for state purposes not for national list. In national list one is senior, other is junior. Now when you give same benefit to both, junior can't overtake the senior. Defies logic...then at the time of state list you have not done normalization of raw marks,” the court said.
Even the executive director of NBEMS joined the processings through video conferencing and explained the process and the technicalities. However, after hearing the matter for sometime, the court asked respondents, "Show us the formula and how you have calculated the result. We want to see how you have worked the formula. We will keep it confidential. We'll see tomorrow. Please explain it tomorrow".
The court has asked the respondents to show how they have calculated the results of four specific candidates chosen by the court. The matter is listed for hearing on December 6, today.
