The Tamil Nadu government on July 11 assured its support to NEET students from the state in the wake of the Madras High Court's direction to CBSE to grant grace marks and said its future course of action will be based on the steps taken by the central board.
 

On July 11, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court had ordered the CBSE to grant 196 marks--4 marks each for 49 erroneous questions--in the Tamil version of this year's NEET to those who took the exam in the regional language. Health and Family Welfare Minister C Vijayabaskar said the government was in "favour" of Tamil students vis-a-vis the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET). He said "we have not received" a detailed copy of the judgement.

"The (high court) direction has been given to CBSE only. Action will be taken on behalf of our government based on the further steps to be taken by CBSE," he told reporters here in response to a query in this connection. Meanwhile, the CPI welcomed the court verdict, with the party's state secretary R Mutharasan urging the CBSE to implement the court order. "The state committee of the CPI welcomes the high court order," he said in a statement.

Referring to reports of CBSE mulling an appeal against the verdict, he said this would amount to "confirming the social injustice meted out" to the medical aspirants. He said CBSE should not do so and urged the board to implement the order. Passing the orders on a public interest litigation, the high court had directed CBSE to consequently revise the list of eligible candidates and publish it afresh.

The petitioner, senior CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP T K Rangarajan had sought full marks for the 49 questions, saying key words in Tamil questions were wrongly translated from English and this caused confusion among the students. There were 180 questions with a total mark of 720 in the NEET.

The judges said the students who took the NEET for admission to medical and dental colleges in Tamil should be suitably compensated to provide a level-playing ground. The CBSE conducted the NEET on May 6 in 136 cities in 11 languages, the results of which were announced on June 4. In Tamil Nadu, about 1.07 lakh candidates took the test across 170 centres in 10 cities.