The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has passed an interim injunction, restraining CBSE from declaring results of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) that was held on May 7.
Last week, nine students from the CBSE board who had written the NEET exam, had filed a case alleging that the decision to give question papers of different difficulty levels in Tamil and English was unfair. According to their petition, students who wrote the exams in Tamil and other regional languages across the country had easier question papers, than students who wrote the exam in English.
They claimed that this would make it harder for CBSE and English medium students to get selected for medical courses. They further alleged that this would allow undeserving students to score higher marks in the exam.
The case was first heard by Justice Sesha Sai, who directed that notices be sent to the Centre and CBSE. He adjourned it to May 24 but was not available for the hearing. On Wednesday, the case was heard by Justice Muralidharan, who agreed with the students' arguments and passed the interim order.
A Writ Petition has also been filed by the mother of a student in the Madras High Court, to cancel the selection process for undergraduate MBBS courses for this academic year. It has also sought a directive to the CBSE to hold one afresh, which shall be common for all candidates.
Several candidates who took the paper in English in Tamil Nadu had reportedly complained that their papers were more difficult and time consuming. While the English version was based on CBSE content, the Tamil version was allegedly based on the state board syllabus. After being made mandatory, the test was conducted in 10 regional languages including Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati and Telugu apart from English, this year.