Chennai: Coming to the rescue of 38 rural students, aspiring to the medical seats, who submitted their applications for Neet, a week prior to the last date but could not remit their examination fees online due to non-receipt of a one time password, the Madras high court has directed the CBSE to accept their fees through RTGS on or before May 2 and issue hall ticket for them to enable them to sit for the Neet-UG-2017 exams.
“The initiative taken by the CBSE in conducting the examination throughout the country online is a laudable one. However, the better connectivity has to be addressed or provisions ought to have been made for an alternate method for the situation like the present cases. Admittedly, a group of students has gone to the same internet centre to make their application form online. Though they were successful till the stage of applying and getting it registered, they were unsuccessful in completing the procedure by paying the required fees.
The low internet speed and power outage are the perennial problems faced even in the metropolitan cities. Therefore, no mala fides can be imputed to these candidates who could not remit the fees online in the absence of any alternate mode”, said Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana while disposing of a petition from M. Mugunthan and 37 others. According to petitioners, the students made sincere effort to register themselves and remit the payment. Due to poor connectivity and non-receipt of the one-time password, they could not remit the fee. This failure was totally unintentional nor wanton.
The judge said in an identical situation in a batch of cases, this court by an order dated April 20 disposed of the same by issuing a positive direction to the CBSE to consider their request to receive the payment for Neet-UG-2017 examination fees in any other manner suitable to it and the said order was upheld by a division bench. “The CBSE is directed to accept the fees from the petitioners with respect to their application forms as registered online through RTGS on or before May 2. On receipt of the fees, the CBSE is directed to generate the hall ticket and issue the same to them to enable them to sit for the Neet”, the judge added.
