NEET-2024: Grace marks disturb rank tally; aspirants worried

LUCKNOW: A large number of candidates who took the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET-2024) exam have raised concern over the grace marks provided to several students, which eventually has disturbed the rank tally.

“I scored 645 and I should have got a rank around 12K but I stand at 35K, which reduces my chance to get admission to a good government college,” said Prince, a resident of Orai and a candidate of NEET-2024.

Candidates said a change in total marks owing to grace marks has brought a tough situation before those who did not get grace marks. “Grace marks were given to candidates who took exam at centres where some kind of issues came up, such as delayed start of exam thus reduced total duration of exam or where first and second paper were distributed creating confusion and time loss,” said Prince.

As on Thursday, NTA issued a press release on queries of candidates but this could not satisfy the applicants. “No points are clear,” said Punya Tripathi, elder sister of a candidate and a lawyer. She said, “Even those candidates who scored 700 marks are worried about which college would they get admission in. My brother got 651 marks and as per previous year calculations, his rank should have been maximum up to 7K. But the grace marks have lowered his rank to over 28K. This leaves bleak chance of getting a good government college. All this is happening because of surprise grace marks that were not mentioned in the brochure when forms for NEET-2024 were filled by candidates.”

“Grace marks were never mentioned to us while filling up application form. Rules that are mentioned at the time of filling up form are to be followed, but the National Testing Agency (NTA) introduced a new provision of grace marks. This provision was used in 2018 and was limited till that year,” said another female candidate from Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar area.

The counselling dates are yet to be announced for NEET UG admissions. In the country, over one lakh MBBS seats are available at 695 colleges. “Half of the seats are at private colleges, and with changed ranking the chance of getting admission at government college gets bleak,” said another candidate.

Uttar Pradesh has 65 colleges where 35 are government with total over 9K MBBS seats.