In Brief
The Supreme Court set aside a High Court judgment that awarded 196 grace marks (49 questions × 4 marks each) to all 24,000 students who took the NEET-UG 2018 medical entrance exam in Tamil due to translation errors. The Court held that while translation mistakes were regrettable, awarding full marks to every Tamil-medium student without examining their actual answers or the severity of errors was arbitrary and unjust. Students were instructed to refer to the English version for ambiguity, and since medical courses are taught in English, basic competency was expected. The Court approved a future dual-translation methodology to prevent similar errors.
The lawyer headnote and full judgment text are available to registered users.