NEET 2018: SC sets aside High Court order on grace marks
Krishnadas Rajagopal
NEW DELHI, November 23, 2018 00:00 IST
‘Affected candidates could have referred to English paper’
The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside a Madras High Court direction to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to grant grace marks to students who suffered from the erroneous Tamil translation of 49 questions in the NEET test for undergraduate medical admissions.
A Bench of Justices S.A. Bobde and L. Nageswara Rao said the students could have easily discovered the imprecise word to be faulty and a simple reference to the English version of the question paper would have clarified the defect. The students are given both English and Tamil versions of the question paper during exams.
One of the mis-translated words was the Tamil version of the word ‘cheetah’. It read ‘Sita’ in the Tamil question paper.
“Now it would be obvious to apply the common sense that Sita, which is a name of goddess and used for human beings, cannot occur in the example for divergent evolution that deals with man, bat and cheetah, etc. This mistake in ‘cheetah’ appearing as ‘Sita’ is said to have occurred because of mispronunciation of the word ‘Chiruthaiyin’ as ‘Seethavin’,” Justice Bobde said.
The court said since the mode of teaching after admission would be in English, it was no excuse to say that the student would not be able to read and understand the English language. Students were expected to resolve any ambiguity by reference to the questions in English language.
Besides, there was no grievance about any ambiguities about the same questions in English.
But on July 10, the High Court decided to grant four grace marks to each incorrectly translated question to nearly 24,000 students who took the NEET in Tamil. Thus, each of these students were entitled to a total of 196 grace marks.
“Because of a mistake in translation which could have been detected and avoided by the students, we find it unjust that all the students across the board who took the examination in Tamil have been awarded four marks for all the 49 questions without any reference to the answer of those questions.
Undue benefit
“The consequence is equally unjust and unacceptable as the students who gave the examination in Tamil have been unduly benefited only because they opted to give examination in Tamil,” the Supreme Court held.
The court further directed that from the year 2019-20 onwards the NEET-UG Examination will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), a society set up by the Government of India with the objective of conducting examination for grant of admission, etc.
“The NTA is established to ensure that the methodology of translation to conduct the examination is improved. In order to make it foolproof, it is proposed that the translation will be done by subject experts who are proficient in both the languages, i.e., source language and target language,” the judgment said. The court explained that from next year, translation would be done from the target language to the source language and back to the target language.
“Thus, for example a question in English translated in Tamil will be retranslated back to English. This dual translation approach will remove any chance of ambiguity in the question paper,” the Supreme Court said.
The CBSE prepares question papers in English and 12 regional languages for the NEET exams.
CBSE prepares question papers in English and 12 regional languages for the NEET exams
Krishnadas Rajagopal
NEW DELHI, November 23, 2018 00:00 IST
‘Affected candidates could have referred to English paper’
The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside a Madras High Court direction to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to grant grace marks to students who suffered from the erroneous Tamil translation of 49 questions in the NEET test for undergraduate medical admissions.
A Bench of Justices S.A. Bobde and L. Nageswara Rao said the students could have easily discovered the imprecise word to be faulty and a simple reference to the English version of the question paper would have clarified the defect. The students are given both English and Tamil versions of the question paper during exams.
One of the mis-translated words was the Tamil version of the word ‘cheetah’. It read ‘Sita’ in the Tamil question paper.
“Now it would be obvious to apply the common sense that Sita, which is a name of goddess and used for human beings, cannot occur in the example for divergent evolution that deals with man, bat and cheetah, etc. This mistake in ‘cheetah’ appearing as ‘Sita’ is said to have occurred because of mispronunciation of the word ‘Chiruthaiyin’ as ‘Seethavin’,” Justice Bobde said.
The court said since the mode of teaching after admission would be in English, it was no excuse to say that the student would not be able to read and understand the English language. Students were expected to resolve any ambiguity by reference to the questions in English language.
Besides, there was no grievance about any ambiguities about the same questions in English.
But on July 10, the High Court decided to grant four grace marks to each incorrectly translated question to nearly 24,000 students who took the NEET in Tamil. Thus, each of these students were entitled to a total of 196 grace marks.
“Because of a mistake in translation which could have been detected and avoided by the students, we find it unjust that all the students across the board who took the examination in Tamil have been awarded four marks for all the 49 questions without any reference to the answer of those questions.
Undue benefit
“The consequence is equally unjust and unacceptable as the students who gave the examination in Tamil have been unduly benefited only because they opted to give examination in Tamil,” the Supreme Court held.
The court further directed that from the year 2019-20 onwards the NEET-UG Examination will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), a society set up by the Government of India with the objective of conducting examination for grant of admission, etc.
“The NTA is established to ensure that the methodology of translation to conduct the examination is improved. In order to make it foolproof, it is proposed that the translation will be done by subject experts who are proficient in both the languages, i.e., source language and target language,” the judgment said. The court explained that from next year, translation would be done from the target language to the source language and back to the target language.
“Thus, for example a question in English translated in Tamil will be retranslated back to English. This dual translation approach will remove any chance of ambiguity in the question paper,” the Supreme Court said.
The CBSE prepares question papers in English and 12 regional languages for the NEET exams.
CBSE prepares question papers in English and 12 regional languages for the NEET exams
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