The Madhya Pradesh High Court, on Monday, December 9, quashed the state merit list for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test - Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024, citing errors in the methodology used. The court has directed the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to prepare the merit list afresh.
This ruling comes as a relief for many NEET-PG aspirants in the state, who had raised concerns over irregularities in the methodology employed by the NBEMS to create the state merit list.
Reacting to the high court's judgment, Dr Abhishek Shukla, one of the petitioners, said, “The judgment is exactly what we had hoped for. This is what we sought from the high court. Hats off to the justices for understanding the matter so thoroughly and delivering the verdict accordingly. I cannot thank them enough.”
During the hearing, the high court observed that the state awards incentive scores to in-service candidates. For the All India Merit List, the NBEMS uses a normalisation process and prepares a comparative merit list based on percentiles. However, for the State Merit List, the NBEMS reverted to using raw scores (before normalisation), added the incentive marks to these raw scores, and then applied the normalisation process again.
The division bench of Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Vinay Saraf noted that this formula used by NBEMS was faulty as the incentivised marks need to be granted on the normalised score in order to ensure a level-playing field in the multiple shift exam.
“The formula used by the NBEMS was flawed, or rather, it was illegal. The public was never informed about the mechanism for adding incentive marks, and it was only disclosed during the court hearing. Additionally, applying normalisation twice is also unacceptable,” said Dr Shukla.
The petitioners in this case, all in-service candidates who had appeared for the NEET-PG 2024 examination, sought a directive to the NBEMS to redraw the State Merit List, alleging discrepancies with the All India ranks.
The petitioners highlighted that while a few candidates scored higher in the All India Ranks, their positions in the state merit list were lower than those of other candidates, despite receiving the same incentive marks.
“The judgement is in favour of meritorious students and in my opinion, is quite satisfactory. I believe that now, the NBE or any other exam-conducting body will consider students' interests when implementing any mechanism,” said Dr Akash Soni, a NEET-PG 2024 candidate from Madhya Pradesh.
The candidates added that they expect similar concerns to arise in other states where incentive marks have been awarded, especially in light of the MP High Court's judgment.
It is also worth noting that a petition is currently pending before the Supreme Court of India, challenging the two-shift exam process and the normalisation method used for this year’s NEET-PG exam. The hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, December 10.
