The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is considering moving the Supreme Court in order to contest the Madras High Court’s decision on granting grace marks to NEET students who gave exams in Tamil language. Following the decision, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) put a hold on its second allotment results, which were supposed to be declared yesterday, July 12th.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court directed the CBSE to grant four grace marks each for 49 questions – 196 marks in total – for students who had attempted the exam in Tamil. The reason for the grace marks was an ambiguity in the framing of questions that had been improperly translated from English into Tamil.

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The court in its decision said, “The difficulty of a student in taking an examination of such importance, in understanding rightly a wrong question, be howsoever mild the error, is to be appreciated, placing ourselves in his shoes and not in the shoes of those having the leisure of easy chair reflection.”

The court also asked the board to issue a new merit list within two weeks and that all admissions based on the previous list be kept at abeyance.

Following the decision, the NEET counselling process was put on hold in the State of Tamil Nadu. The MCC, which has 15% quota in all India seats, too, put a hold on its second allotment results, which were expected to be declared on July 12th.

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A source at the CBSE told the Indian Express that the board might approach the Supreme Court to contest the Madras High Court’s decision. The source reportedly said, “The NEET bulletin clearly states that candidates opting for regional languages will be given a bi-lingual question paper and, in case of any ambiguity in translation, the English version will be treated as final.”

NEET counselling is being conducted for around 67,000 MBBS seats and 30,000 BDS seats. Around 13 lakh candidates appeared for the NEET exam, of which roughly 24,000 students had taken the test in Tamil.