High Court upholds challenge to CUET-PG answer key, directs NTA to award marks for correct answer

Indian Express

a day ago

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to rectify the Common University Entrance Test- Postgraduate (CUET-PG) 2025 result of a Panjab University student who was denied marks for a correctly attempted question in Political Science. Holding that the NTA's reasoning was 'not in consonance with the simple language of the disputed question', the court said the answer given by the petitioner was 'correct in terms of plain reading'.
A division bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sanjiv Berry passed the order while disposing of a writ petition filed by Gurshaan Singh Cheema, a final-year undergraduate student from the Chandigarh-based university. Cheema had sought the setting aside of the provisional answer key published on April 24, the final answer key released on May 6, and the result and score sheet issued the same day.
Challenging the final answer key issued by NTA for the CUET-PG 2025 Political Science paper, Cheema contended that his answer to Question ID 7311302427 concerning the chronological order of four constitutional amendments, was rejected despite being historically accurate.
For Cheema, Advocate Prashant Kumar Kapila contended that the petitioner lost five marks — lack of credit of four marks for the correct and negative marking (one mark) for selecting an answer different from the one listed. At the same time, the counsel argued that a student who selected the factually incorrect answer gained four marks instead of getting one negative mark. This, the counsel said, significantly impacted his rank and eligibility for admission.
The court reproduced the question in its order:
'Arrange the following amendments to the Constitution in a chronological order:
A. Incorporation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli as Union Territory
B. Abolition of Election Tribunals
C. Abolition of Privy Purse
D. Reducing the age of voting rights from 21 to 18 years.'
Cheema had selected Option 1 (A, B, C, D), which corresponds with the order in which the constitutional amendments were enacted — 1961, 1966, 1971 and 1989, respectively. However, the NTA had marked Option 2 (A, C, B, D) as correct, based on what it claimed was a subject expert's interpretation of 'chronology' in the context of 'effect on federal structure and political development'.
Rejecting this rationale, the court noted:
'Undoubtedly, the amendments… were enacted in the year 1961, 1966, 1971, 1989, respectively and by arranging these enactments in chronological order, the correct answer had to be Option 1 (A, B, C, D)… The explanation given by the NTA… appears to be hyper technical and not in consonance with the simple language of the disputed question.'
The court further observed that the question did not mention any context beyond the literal chronological arrangement:
'There was no occasion for the candidate to have answered so in terms of the concept which was in the mind of the subject expert, which was nowhere reflected in black and white in the question paper.'
Accordingly, the bench directed the NTA to treat Option 1 as the correct answer and update Cheema's scorecard.
'The petitioner is entitled to get credit thereof in the scorecard,' the court said, adding that NTA must issue the revised scorecard within 15 days of receiving the order.
The NTA conducts the CUET, a standardised test, for admission to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Central Universities and other participating institutes. Its results are accepted by several state universities too.
Senior Panel Counsel Anil Chawla represented the Union of India while Advocate Arun Gosain appeared for the NTA and Advocates Hemen Aggarwal and Dashim Garg represented the UGC.