NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday decided to hear on August 9 a plea for a direction to the authorities to postpone the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Post Graduate examination, 2024.
A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra agreed to list, the petition for hearing as a counsel for the petitioners submitted that the examination is to be held on August 11.
The petitioner asked the court to defer the examination till the plea is decided by it.
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Petitioners Vishal Soren, and others contended they were facing a lot of difficulties in reaching their exam centres since they have been allocated centres in cities which are inconvenient for them to reach.
"Many similarly placed candidates have been allocated cities that are highly inconvenient for them to reach and further seeking details of the formula for normalisation of the four sets of question paper," the petition said.
The allocation of the cities for the test was made on July 31 and designated centres are scheduled to be declared on Thursday, August 8.
This decision has left many candidates with very less time to travel to the respective exam centres on August 11, the petiton said and sought appropriate directions and orders to the authorities.
The petitioners also sought clarity on ensuring that the normalisation formula is disclosed to the candidates, eliminating any possibility of arbitrariness in the process.
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They sought a direction to conduct the exam in a single batch to ensure a uniform and fair testing environment for all candidates.
"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.
"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.
