Supreme Court Dismisses Challenge to NEET‑UG 2025 Answer Key, Allows Counselling to Proceed

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a plea questioning the final answer key and result of the NEET-UG 2025 examination conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), declining to get involved in the case at this juncture.

A Bench headed by Justices P.S. Narasimha and R. Mahadevan observed that more than one correct answer was possible for a particular question and made it clear that the top court would not interfere in the result of a national entrance test solely on the basis of a person's objection.

In the hearing, the lawyer of the petitioner referred to a 2024 Supreme Court order that had directed a new assessment of scores after expert review by an IIT Delhi panel on a contentious physics question last year's NEET.

But the present Bench was firm in its position, differentiating the previous ruling from the case at hand. The judges pointed out that the 2024 intervention was the result of serious discrepancies in the conduct of the NEET-UG of that year, which necessitated judicial review.

The recent plea, submitted via advocate Sriram P., claimed that the NTA's announcement of results was "arbitrary" and "erroneous," and in disregard of cogent objections, including academically sound ones.

In the petition, the NTA's failure to recognize factual mistakes in some answers constituted a grave injustice, leading to an unconstitutional loss of marks and affecting the petitioner's merit status and future educational opportunities directly.

The challenge particularly referred to Question No. 136, alleging that the official answer key did not take into account data from the Class 11 NCERT Biology textbook. The textbook, the plea pointed out, clearly indicates that cortisol—a hormone of the adrenal cortex—has a role to sustain cardiovascular function, and thus marks should have been given accordingly.

The petitioner also claimed that the withholding of 4 marks and the penalty of one mark removed for an erronously marked response had a substantial impact on his ranking and possibly his acceptance into a desired medical school.

Peculiarly, this is not the first such case to come before the Supreme Court. A similar petition questioning the NEET-UG 2025 answer key was recently rejected, affirming the Court's disinclination to interfere with established examination results in the absence of cogent evidence of system failure.