A group of 19 post-graduation (PG) medical aspirants have moved the Supreme Court (SC), raising concerns about the scoring method used for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-PG examination.
The candidates have expressed doubts about the score normalisation formula adopted by the National Board of Examinations for Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to bring parity in the results of the exam, which was held in two shifts on August 11.
Petitioners seek transparency in examination process
In their plea, which the apex court will likely hear on Friday, the petitioners have sought more details about the normalisation method.
The students have also requested the court to direct NBEMS to publish the answer sheets of all candidates along with the raw or pre-normalised scores as well as normalised scores. They also the answer key, question paper and the option of revaluation to be provided to candidates in the upcoming years as well to ensure transparency in the examination process.
Petition challenges NEET-PG normalisation method
The plea comes after widespread allegations of discrepancies in the NEET-UG results, which led to the National Testing Agency (NTA) revising scores of some of the candidates. While the NEET-PG exam was originally scheduled to be held on July 7, it was postponed, as the authorities wanted to ensure that the test's integrity isn't compromised. As many as 2,28,540 candidates took the test.
The normalisation process was necessitated as, unlike previous years, the exam was held in two shifts. Before the test, NBEMS had announced that it would adopt the normlaisation process used for most of other the entrance exams administered in multiple shifts, where the percentile scores of the candidates are calculated based on their position in comparison to other candidates within their respective shifts.
However, the petitioners contend that this method, while suitable to other tests where the subject-wise distribution of scores is fixed, is inappropriate for NEET-PG exams, where questions are drawn from 19 interlinked and overlapping subjects. They wanted NBEMS to adopt the 'equating and scaling' scoring method used in the 2017 edition of NEET-PG, which factors in the relative difficulty level of question papers given in different shifts besides the students' rankings.
"The normalisation method used by NBEMS has resulted in rank inflation in NEET-PG results. The candidates believe that the second shift question paper was more difficult than the first shift one and, hence, the scores should have been scaled," explained an associate of one of the petitioners.
Meanwhile, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has announced the counselling schedule of PG medical courses, wuth the the registration process for the all India quota (AIQ) seats ste to begin on September 20. However, the petitioners have asked the top court to direct the MCC to put the NEET PG counselling on hold.
