Indore, June 24 (IANS) A day after the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court reserved its judgment in the case pertaining to power outage during the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 exam, advocate Mridul Bhatnagar said that several irregularities were noticed during the hearing.

Bhatnagar, who represented the petitioners (students) in the court, talking to IANS on Tuesday, said that he tried to put all relevant facts before the court, but the main issue was power outage, and he has requested for an order for re-examination for the affected students.

“There have been contradictions on submissions from the National Testing Agency (NTA) and officials from the Indore administration. What has surprised more is when a senior official told the court that district administration wasn’t asked to arrange power backup at examination centres,” he said.

He added that he has also presented CCTV footage and weather reports showing heavy rain and blackout at several exam centres, and the court has reviewed them thoroughly during the hearing.

He said that both sides were given ample time to present facts before the court.

He claimed that during hearing, the NTA has admitted that electricity was unavailable for around 15–20 minutes to more than an hour.

“To this, we questioned as to why some exam centres were not facilitated with power backup, especially when power cut is obvious in the city,” he asked.

Advocate Bhatnagar also told that initially 90 students had filed a petition in the Indore High Court regarding alleged irregularities during the NEET-UG exam, however, later few more students had reached to the court.

“During the hearing, we presented all our facts and so did NTA and the Union of India. The main issue we highlighted was the power outage. Although there were several irregularities, such as lack of drinking water or other problems at the exam centres, our primary point was the absence of electricity,” he told IANS.

He also claimed that the number of affected students was rising and now exceeded 100.

The students asserted that their results had been compromised due to the conditions during the exam.

The NTA, represented virtually by the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and in-person by panel lawyer Rupesh Kumar and Deputy Solicitor General Ramesh Dave, maintained that back-up systems were in place at the affected examination centres.

The NTA continued to oppose the demand for a re-examination, stating it would be unfair to conduct the test again for what they estimated to be around 75–80 students.

–IANS

pd/khz