NEW DELHI: In a setback for National Testing Agency (NTA), Supreme Court has ordered manual evaluation of a NEET-UG 2025 answer sheet after a candidate alleged that the question paper was stapled incorrectly, resulting in a jumbled sequence of questions. The direction comes amid growing criticism that NTA has failed to adequately address students’ grievances, with some even being told to seek redressal “from courts.”Despite repeated representations by candidates about faulty booklets and scoring discrepancies, NTA has largely maintained that its processes are foolproof. However, in this case, SC took serious view of the complaint and rejected NTA’s suggestion that no real harm was caused.TOI on June 11, in its report titled “Students raise serious concerns over errors in NEET-UG papers” highlighted the issue. Candidates interviewed had flagged faulty booklets with jumbled page orders, stating they marked incorrect answers due to mismatch between questions and the OMR sheet. When asked specifically about such instances, NTA responded by saying, “There are four series of question papers. The jumbling is thus of four types. There are four sets of keys. These are applicable to the respective series.” Students, however, said this response ignored cases where jumbling was not just due to booklet series but stapling or printing errors. “We were told that nothing could be done and that we should take it up legally if we had a problem,” said a candidate from Odisha.In this particular case before the top court, the petitioner claimed the sequencing in his paper was highly erratic – running from question numbers 1 to 27, followed by 54 to 81, then 28 to 53, 118 to 151, 82 to 117, and 152 to 180. This disordered layout, he argued, made it virtually impossible to match the questions correctly with the standard serial OMR sheet, which was in the expected 1 to 180 format.In its Aug 5 order, SC said, “We have heard learned ASG (additional solicitor general) appearing for the respondent(s). She has submitted a copy of the question paper in order to explain that there was a mistake merely in the stapling of the question paper which led to erroneous sequencing in as much as sequencing was not in seriatim and that this could not have caused any prejudice to the petitioner herein.” “However, in order to satisfy ourselves, we direct that the petitioner’s paper shall be evaluated manually and the result of the evaluation be placed on the record. The said exercise shall be carried out within a period of one week,” it had said.