The Supreme Court has granted interim relief to a NEET UG 2025 candidate who claimed his marks and rank were affected due to the incorrect sequencing of the question paper. The Court has directed the manual evaluation of his answer sheet within one week.
A bench comprising Justices B.V. Nagarathna and K.V. Viswanathan passed the order after the candidate explained that the sequence of questions in his paper was completely disordered. Instead of following the usual order from Question 1 to 180, the questions appeared in a random sequence: starting from 1 to 27, then 54 to 81, 28 to 53, followed by 118 to 151, 82 to 117, and finally 152 to 180.
The OMR sheet, however, was printed in the correct serial order from 1 to 180. As a result, there was no alignment between the question paper and the OMR, creating confusion during the exam. The candidate said he had requested a new question paper, but the invigilators denied his request.
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According to a report by Live Law, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Archana Pathak Dave explained that this was an extremely rare error, caused only by to incorrect stapling of the question paper. She said such instances are uncommon and argued that despite the sequencing issue, it should not have impacted the candidate’s performance.
However, Justice Nagarathna emphasised that the candidate deserved a fair process:
Join NEET News 2025 “Process is important. Even if he doesn’t get a seat, he should feel satisfied that the highest court addressed his issue.”
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Justice Viswanathan also questioned why semi-skilled staff handled such crucial tasks like stapling the papers. The ASG responded that only semi-literate people are hired for this task to prevent any risk of paper leakage, as fully literate staff might memorise and share questions. She also mentioned that out of 25 lakh candidates, only nine cases of such issues have been reported, and most were dismissed by the Rajasthan High Court.
Justice Nagarathna concluded,
“Whether it’s rare or not, justice must be delivered.”
The bench stated in its order:
“We have considered the ASG’s explanation regarding the stapling error that led to wrong sequencing. While the government believes it didn’t affect the result, we direct that the petitioner’s paper be manually evaluated, and the result be submitted to the court. This process must be completed within one week.”
The case will be listed again on August 12, 2025, for further hearing.
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