Students from Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, who appeared for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test - Undergraduate (NEET-UG) exams have urged the National Testing Agency (NTA) to consider a separate cut off mark and counselling for them since they wrote a question set of different code, which incorporated many out of syllabus questions.
The students submitted a petition with collector G Lakshmipathy during the weekly griecance dressal meeting in Thoothukudi on Monday, June 10. stated a report by The New Indian Express.
The parents and students led by activists Merina Prabhu and Arunadevi, said that the 1,500 students appeared for the NEET UG exam conducted on May 5 at the exam centres Alagar Public School and Kamalavathi Higher Secondary School near Tiruchendur, were given a question paper set with codes MNOP, which was tougher than the question set bearing the code QRST that was given for the rest of the centres.
Neither those officiated the exam at the Alagar Public School nor the NTA gave a proper response for their grievance.
"Many could not score better marks because of the tougher question set, which the NTA refrain from acknowledging," they said.
Activist Prabu said, "The students have spent years and a lot of money for preparations to score good marks in the NEET examination and land a top government institution. However, different yardsticks for two centres had clamped down many of their dreams," he said.
NTA had reportedly deputed a committee to investigate the anomalies expressed in four other centres in the country, however, the issue related to Thoothukudi had not been considered, the students and parents rued.
An aspirant Vignesh, a repeater for the third time, said that the questions of PMNO were long and they were unable to finish before time, when compared to the question set of QRST. "This agonised us mentally and depressed out parents. We are very worried about our future career," he said.
"While the rest of the country had QRST question set, we were given the PMNO code, which was tough and had out of syllabus questions," said a woman NEET aspirant.
Jubil Timothy, who has scored 99 percent in plus two of the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) syllabus, however, had scored 607 marks while appearing for the exam at Public Alagar school, says he would have scored more than 700 marks had he got the QRST question set.
The students and parents appealed to the NTA to provide a separate cut off marks and varied counselling for them.
