The Supreme Court on Friday, hearing a plea by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), has stayed Madras High Court’s decision to grant grace marks to NEET students who took the CBSE NEET exam in Tamil.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court came to the decision of grant grace marks to Tamil NEET students after it was revealed that certain questions were translated ambiguously from English into Tamil.

The Supreme Court bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao said that marks could not be given out in this fashion. The bench said that the order puts students who took the exam in Tamil in an advantageous position.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court bench asked the concerned parties to come up with a solution in two weeks’ time and posted the matter for hearing after two weeks.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court, in its decision on July 10th, directed the CBSE to grant four grace marks each for 49 questions – 196 marks in total – to students who had attempted the exam in Tamil.

The High Court was responding to a petition claiming that there was a mistranslation in the Tamil question paper, which left the Tami, NEET candidates at a disadvantage.

The court had asked the board to issue a new merit list within 2 weeks. It also asked that all admissions based on the previous list be kept at abeyance.

Following the High Court’s decision, several institutions put their NEET counselling and admission processes on hold, as the decision could lead to a change in subsequent merit lists.