National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test candidate alleges OMR manipulation, plans legal action

Bengaluru: A National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) candidate from the city has claimed that the OMR sheet displayed on the NTA (National Testing Agency) website under her name was manipulated and didn’t match the responses she had given during the exam.At a press conference, Spurthy S, a student of Soundarya PU College, said she found a stark mismatch between the responses she had given and those in the OMR sheet provided on the website.In a letter written to NTA, she said: “Upon attempting to download my OMR sheet, I encountered initial technical errors. When it became accessible, I observed that the shaded bubbles for the register number were correct, but the handwritten number appeared overwritten.

I also remember writing the time under my signature, as instructed by the invigilator during the exam. However, the time written on the OMR sheet isn’t visible in the scanned copy.

This raised concerns about possible technical misread or mismatch during evaluation.”“Several answers I attempted and marked are left unshaded. Some questions I didn’t attempt are marked. This has led to a discrepancy of nearly 174 marks, inconsistent with my performance and expectations,” she alleged.

According to her, while currently her rank is around 93,000, it should have been around 200, based on the answers she claimed to have marked.While she wrote to NTA on June 3, the agency replied on June 12 stating that the OMR sheet was indeed hers. “We’d like to assure you that the OMR sheet displayed on the portal is the same as the one submitted by you at the exam centre. The sheet includes the details filled in by you, such as your roll number (both in figures and bubbled format), the question paper booklet number and series code, and bears both your signature and that of the invigilator.

The image visible to you is a scanned copy of the original OMR sheet received from the centre under due process. The responses shown are those marked by you during the exam. We hope this clarifies your concern,” the response read.The student said she intends to approach Karnataka high court over the matter. “I secured 625 out of 625 in SSLC and 99% in II PU. In CET, I have a rank of 1,386,” she added.