NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain 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 asked senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, appearing for the petitioners as to how the court can postpone the examinations.
The counsel contended the plea was rescheduling the examinations as those are to be conducted in two shifts and then normalisation process has to be applied.
"One mark will make a difference. I do not mind examinations being held the day after tomorrow as long as it is one exam," Hegde said.
The court said it can't reschedule the examination at the behest of five students.
"We can't devise new education policy and this is not the perfect world," the bench said.
The court also noted about two lakh students are appearing in the examinations.
Also Read: SC agrees to hear on Friday plea to postpone NEET PG 2024
"As a matter of principle, we cannot reschedule, there are two lakh students and four lakh parents who will weep over the weekend. We cannot put careers of so many students at risk just because of the petitioners. We do not who is behind these petitioners," the bench told the counsel.
The bench, however, agreed normalisation of marks may not always be correct way, in a diverse nation, one can't be help in such large scale examination.
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 were 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.
Also Read: SC declines re-test of NEET UG, 2024
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.
