Madhya Pradesh High Court: In a batch of writ appeals filed by the National Testing Agency (‘NTA’) and medical students against the previous order passed by the Single Judge Bench concerning the power outage during the NEET Undergraduate (UG) Examination, 2025 (‘the exam’), the Division Bench of Vivek Rusia* and Binod Kumar Dwivedi, JJ., allowed the appeals filed by the NTS holding that the present case was not fit for re-examination.
Background
Writ petitions were filed by students seeking relief in the form of a re-test or a suitable alternative solution, as a severe thunderstorm and rainfall caused a power outage during examination hours in several examination centres in Indore and Ujjain, which adversely affected their ability to attempt the paper under optimal conditions. According to the students, there was a visibility issue in these centres due to the lack of light or very dim light. There was no proper arrangement for backup lights during power cuts or failures by the NTA and local administration. The NTA contended that, though there was a power outage during the examination in question, there was sufficient natural light for the students to take the exam.
The Single Judge vide order dated 23-06-2025 allowed the petitions filed by the students and directed NTA to conduct a re-examination for all those students who had approached the Court before the release of the Provisional Answer Key on 03-06-2025 (‘cut-off date’), while denying re-test to those students who had approached the Court after the cut-off date. The Court also clarified that the rank of the students giving a re-test would be solely based on the marks obtained in the re-test.
Aggrieved by this order, the present appeals were filed by the NTA challenging the direction of re-examination and by the students who were denied re-test on the ground that they approached the Court after the cut-off date.
Analysis
The Court stated that it was undisputed that there was poor disruption in several exam centres due to heavy rainfall and thunderstorms. After receipt of the complaint, the electricity supply company immediately restored the electricity supply. The local administration arranged for alternate modes of light, like candles, emergency lights, power backup, an inverter, etc. However, due to the power failure, the students were disturbed.
The Court remarked that the sudden situation was beyond the control of NTA as well as the local administration because normally, monsoon never reaches the eastern part of Madhya Pradesh in the first week of May; therefore, no one could anticipate rainfall and thunder in peak summer days. Therefore, the Court stated that it was unfortunate for the students that they had to attend the examination during such unpredictable disturbance.
The Court noted that, as per the figure given by the Union, out of 49 centres, there was a power generator in 19 centres, in 18 centres there was sufficient natural light to take the exam despite a power outage, and in 2 centres there was a power outage for less than two minutes. Furthermore, according to the Union, it was apparent from the OMR sheet that the darkened circles were done perfectly by the students of the 20 centres which faced disruption; this showed that there was sufficient natural light inside the rooms. They contended that on average, the students attempted 123 questions in all the centres, which proved that the power outage did not play a significant role in the performance of the candidates in the affected centres.
The Court also noted that nothing was on record to show that any of the students demanded extra time to compensate for the loss of time during the power outage. Eleven candidates in Indore obtained 600 out of 720 marks, and four of them were from those centres that faced the power outage. Further, the second topper of the country was also from Indore and from the centre from where most of the candidates had filed the writ petitions.
The Court remarked that this exam was very important for every child’s future career, but it was also important to note that out of 27,264 candidates, only 70 candidates filed writ petitions complaining about disruption due to power outage, which was a very insignificant figure.
Upon perusal of the bar diagrams presented by NTA regarding the average number of responses in the exam from all the centres in Indore, the Court held that it was evident from the result and performance of the writ petitioners that they were not seriously affected due to the power outage.
The Court noted that before taking any decision, the NTA constituted a committee of three independent professors from IIT, Delhi, and the said Expert Committee had neither recommended the grant of extra marks nor re-testing. In this regard, the Court referred to Vanshika Yadav v. Union of India, (2024) 9 SCC 743, wherein the Supreme Court explained the conditions or litmus test for directing a re-test. Where the entire integrity of the examination was at stake, that could be a consideration for a re-test.
Therefore, the Court rejected the contention that the NTA could prepare the two sets of question papers, and a re-test could be conducted from the second set of question papers. The Court reiterated that the second sets are always prepared in every examination to be used in case the first set of question papers is leaked, destroyed, lost, etc., but in one examination, both sets of question papers cannot be used, either entire examination will be held with one set of question paper or another set of question paper. In this regard, the Court referred to Aditi v. National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1288.
The Court remarked that it was correct that the aggrieved students prepared for a whole year before appearing in this examination, which was a turning point in their careers. They must have taken coaching from higher and expensive coaching centres along with their regular studies of Higher Secondary School Examinations. Therefore, if they had to face this type of situation, they and their family members might feel that they could not reach a place that they dreamed of in life because of this incident. Additionally, more than 22 lakh students appeared for the limited 1 lakh seats; therefore, the selection percentage was very low. There was also no guarantee that even if the re-test was organised in all conducive circumstances or atmosphere, the aggrieved students would secure higher marks than in this examination.
To avoid such a situation in the future, the Court directed the NTA and the local administration of each district to ensure that all the measures, especially the continuity of power supply, proper sitting arrangement, availability of air and cooling, etc, were present in the exam centres. It was the responsibility of the local administration to prepare the list of centres that could be used for these types of examinations.
Regarding the appeals filed by the students who approached the Court after the cut-off date, the Court stated that it made no difference whether those students approached earlier, later, or during the pendency of the writ petitions because all the students were similarly placed. They all complained of similar problems that they faced in the examination. The only difference was that they checked their results after the release of the Provisional Answer Key and found that they could not perform well because of the power outage. The Court further noted that some of the students complained to the local administration and NTA for re-testing and were waiting for a response before approaching the Court. Therefore, they were at par with those who immediately approached the Court and were granted the relief.
Given the aforesaid, the Court stated that it was not a fit case for a re-test of the exam. Hence, all the writ appeals filed by the NTA were allowed, but those filed by the students were rejected. Accordingly, the impugned order was set aside.
[National Testing Agency v. Laxmi Devi, Writ Appeal No. 1842 of 2025, decided on 14-07-2025]
*Judgment authored by: Justice Vivek Rusia
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For the NTA and Union of India: Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, Senior Counsel Rupesh Kumar, Pankhuri Shrivastava, Deputy Solicitor General of India Romesh Dave, Diksha Paliwal, Atharva Dave, and Bhumika Dwivedi
For the students: Senior Counsel Vivek Sharan, Mradul Bhat Nagar, N.S. Bhati, Chinmaya Mehta, Senior Counsel Aditya Sanghi, Kamal Tiwari, Rohit Kumar Mangal, Ajay Jain, and Kirti Patwardhan
