Supreme Court paves way for declaration of Neet results

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the dec-ks for the declaration of results of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Neet) examination held on May 7 for admission to medical and BDS courses across the country.

A vacation bench of Justices Prafulla C. Pant and Deepak Gupta gave the nod to the CBSE to declare the results by staying an interim order of the Madurai bench of the Madras high court on May 24, restraining the CBSE from releasing the results. The court taking note of the submission that 11.38 lakh students will be affected if results are not dec-lared, directed the auth-orities concerned to proceed with the process of declaration of results, subsequent counselling and admission as per the schedule of admissions fixed in 2016.

The bench said counselling and admission will be subject to the fi-nal orders in these appe-als. The bench issued notice to the students who had filed writ petiti-ons in Madras and Guja-rat high courts seeking their response and posted the matter for further hearing in July. The bench agreed to examine whether different questions papers can be set for the Neet, one in English, Hindi and oth-er regional languages and whether such an examination will affect the level playing field.

The apex court barred all high courts from entertaining fresh petitions against Neet. On May 24, the Madras HC acting on a batch of petitions from students who took Neet examination stayed the results.

It was argued that the CBSE had set different question papers in English and 10 regional languages.