The Supreme Court of India.
Credit: PTI File Photo
The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to examine on August 9 a plea for a direction to the authorities to postpone the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Post Graduate examination, 2024, scheduled on August 11.
A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra decided to list the petition as a counsel for the petitioners contended there was an urgency in the matter.
Petitioners Vishal Soren, and others asked the court to issue a direction to reschedule the examination and hold it in a single batch to ensure a uniform and fair testing environment for all candidates.
They asked the court to rectify examination centre allocation issues and ensure that test centres are allocated more equitably and transparently at nearby places.
"The allocation of test cities was made on July 31, 2024 and the specific centres are scheduled to be declared on August 08, 2024. The petitioner while appreciating that the same has been done to curb any malpractice in the examinations, however, given such a short notice it has become highly difficult for students to make arrangements for their travel to their specific cities," they said.
They said more than two lakh students are scheduled to appear in the examination.
The examination is scheduled to be held in 185 test cities therefore resulting in non-availability of train tickets as well as hiking of air fares due to dynamic pricing, making it almost impossible for a large number of students to reach their test centres.
The fact that the examinations will be conducted in two batches and that the formula for normalisation is unknown to the candidates, they pointed out.
"There is a likelihood that one batch of candidates may face a more difficult question paper than the other batch. Therefore, it is prayed that the formula for normalisation should be disclosed before the conduct of examinations thereby ruling out any fear of arbitrariness," they said.