Karnataka student’s mother issues legal notice over bonus marks in NEET 2024

BENGALURU: A windfall for some candidates in the form of bonus marks in NEET 2024, the all-India entrance test for admission to medical colleges, has stirred a hornets’ nest, with the mother of one of the candidates seeking legal recourse over what she considers as an unfair advantage handed to the beneficiary students, thereby potentially harming selection prospects of several others who were not eligible for the largesse.
The complainant, Suman Singh, has issued a legal notice to National Testing Agency (NTA) over the bonus marks it accorded to question No. 17 in a NEET paper this year.
The complainant said in the provisional answer key released on May 29, 2024, the correct answer provided for the question was (4). However, following a review by the expert committee, the final answer key released on June 4 said both answer options (2) and (4) were correct. As a result, those candidates who had originally opted for answer option (2) had 5 extra marks added to their total — 4 marks for the answer, plus revocation of the negative mark they had originally been penalised with for incorrect answer.
What legal notice says
The legal notice said: “The decision to give marks for a wrong answer is premised upon a reference to an old NCERT book which was published in 2018.”