Aspirants appear for the NEET UG exam at a centre in Chennai. File
| Photo Credit: Akhila Easwaran

The Madras High Court on Friday (June 6, 2025) dismissed a batch of writ petitions seeking a re-conduct of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2025 for candidates who had experienced power outages at the centres where they appeared for the exam.

Justice C. Kumarappan said, when the National Testing Authority (NTA), after field verification, had arrived at a reasonable conclusion that the power outage had not impacted the candidates’ performance, such a conclusion must be accepted by the court unless there was any malafide intention.

“In the instant case, I do not find any malafides on the part of the respondent. Further, all over India, there were about 22 lakh students who had participated in NEET-UG 2025 examination. In such view of the matter, if any re-examination is ordered, it would seriously affect level playing field of two million candidates,” he observed.

A group of candidates who had appeared for NEET-UG 2025 at the centres in Avadi, Kunrathur, and K.K. Nagar in Chennai had approached the court, contending that the power outage had seriously impacted their performance and therefore, a re-examination must be conducted for them and other affected candidates.

However, Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan told the court that the NTA had conducted a scientific assessment and did not find any impact on the performance of the students because of the power outage. He told the court that the examination was conducted in broad daylight.

Stating that the candidates, who had approached the court, would not have been able to shade the OMR sheets properly had there been any impact, he said, the number of questions answered by the students was much higher than the district average.

Though the High Court, during the summer vacation last month, passed an interim order restraining the NTA from releasing the NEET-UG 2025 results until the completion of an inquiry into the candidates’ complaints regarding the power outage, the interim order stands vacated in view of the dismissal of the main writ petitions.