NTA warns public against impersonation of agency
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The National Testing Agency (abbreviated as NTA) has cautioned the general public against impersonation of the exam agency and its officials for any issue related to the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) and other exams conducted by NTA. Apart from this, the testing agency also listed down the official websites of NTA and NEET.
The agency issued a statement informing the public that some persons are using its name as well as the name of NTA officials through fake websites. “Some unscrupulous elements are misusing the name of the NTA and its officials through various websites. Some other persons are also masquerading as NTA Officials,” it said in the statement.
NTA, exam conducting body, also pointed out that the “actual” websites of NTA and NEET are nta.ac.in and exams.nta.ac.in/NEET/ respectively.
“The General Public is advised to regularly visit the NTA website(s) https://www.nta.ac.in/ and https://exams.nta.ac.in/NEET/ for the latest updates regarding the examination,” it further said in its statement.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the NTA to revise its merit list by treating the answer suggested by a panel of three experts of IIT Delhi to a controversial physics question as the correct one. The NTA had treated the two options as correct answers to the Physics question and had granted four marks to those examinees who had marked these options.
Now, only those students, whose answers match the one given by IIT-Delhi, will get four marks for the question and over four lakh NEET-UG aspirants, who answered the other option as per the old NCERT textbook, will lose five marks instead, leading to a reshuffle in their ranks. A bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud dismissed the pleas seeking cancellation and re-test of the controversy-ridden exam, holding that there was no evidence on record to conclude that it was "vitiated" on account of "systemic breach" of its sanctity.
On the issue of the controversial physics question that was asked in the examination, the bench accepted the report of the experts of IIT Delhi that there was only one right answer and not two as alleged by some lawyers. "In view of the experts' determination, we have no manner of doubt with regard to the correct option... we accept the IIT Delhi report and accordingly the NTA shall re-tally the NEET UG result on the basis that option 4 represents the only correct answer to the question," it said.
In its report, IIT Delhi had said only one of the options - "atoms are electrically neutral as they contain an equal number of positive and negative charges" - to a question is correct. Lawyer Tanvi Dubey, who appeared for one of the top rankers, said that the student scored 720 out of 720 and her ranks will go down drastically if only one answer is treated as the correct one.
She said both answers should be considered correct. The plea was rejected by the bench. Earlier in the day, a panel of IIT Delhi experts told the bench that there was only one right answer and not two. The bench CJI referred to the contents of the report and said, "We have received the IIT Delhi report. IIT Director Rangan Banerjee...constituted a committee from the Department of Physics and they say a team of three experts examined the question. They say that option four is the correct answer." The CJI further said that option four, which says "Statement I is correct but Statement II is incorrect', is correct".
"The committee has opined clearly that there was only one option which is option four (4). So the National Testing Agency (NTA) was correct in its answer key which was option four (4)," the bench said.
