Summary – “Physics Wallah CEO Alakh Pandey Files Supreme Court Petition”
• CEO of EdTech company “Physics Wallah” challenges National Testing Agency’s random grace mark awarding practice.
• Over 1,500 applicants took NEET-UG, 2024 for admission to MBBS, BDS, and other courses.
• National Testing Agency and Center asked to respond after Supreme Court declared NEET-UG, 2024, sanctified.
• Pandey’s attorney, J Sai Deepak, filed the urgent listing request in front of a vacation bench.
Alakh Pandey, the CEO of the EdTech company “Physics Wallah,” has filed a Supreme Court petition challenging the National Testing Agency’s purportedly random grace mark awarding practice for more than 1,500 applicants who took the contentious NEET-UG, 2024, in order to be admitted to MBBS, BDS, and other courses.
The National Testing Agency and the Center were asked to respond after the top court stated on Tuesday that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG), 2024, has lost its sanctity.
Attorney J Sai Deepak, who represented Pandey, brought up the urgent listing request on Tuesday in front of a vacation bench made up of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Vikram Nath. The bench requested that he present his plea to the registry of the highest court.
“The Court has received multiple applications. A few of the petitions were submitted prior to the results being announced, citing a leak of the actual paper. There have been notifications given in relation to certain petitions. Our request is a little bit different.
We speak on behalf of Alakh Pandey, who has gathered signatures from almost 20,000 pupils, demonstrating unequivocally that at least 1,500 students have received grace marks at random totaling close to 70–80 marks. We are contesting the grace marks that were given arbitrarily.
The court has stated that it would consider our case together with the others, but it is apparent that the counseling process will not be stopped at this time, according to attorney Sai Deepak.
With its headquarters located in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, Physics Wallah Private Limited, also referred to as Physics Wallah or just PW, is a global Indian firm that specializes in educational technologies.
Alakh Pandey started the business in 2016 as a YouTube channel with the goal of instructing students in physics for the Joint Entrance Exams (JEE). The Physics Wallah app, developed in 2020 by Pandey and his partner Prateek Maheshwari, gave students access to courses designed to prepare them for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).
After obtaining $100 million in its first investment round, the business was valued at $1.1 billion in June 2022, making it a unicorn.
About 24 lakh students took the NEET (UG) 2024 exam, which was administered by the NTA on May 5 across 4,750 centers. Although the results were supposed to be released on June 14, they were instead revealed on June 4, perhaps as a result of the answer sheet examination being finished sooner.
The argument stated that the NTA did not announce the grace mark award on its own at the time of results announcement; rather, it did so in response. “So much so this clarification came about only when queries were raised as to how 718/719 marks out of total 720 marks can be awarded when the same was not technically possible as per the marking scheme,” the motion stated.
It questioned the rationale behind the grace mark policy’s adoption given that the NTA had not previously followed this practice. It required that the NTA submit information about the 1563 candidates who received compensating marks for the time lost, including information about their initial scores, the grace marks they received, and the updated scores they received.
The June 1st plea stems from an investigation by the Bihar police into the purported leak of an exam question paper. Six students from a center in Faridabad, Haryana, made the list of pupils who got a perfect 720, which is unique in the history of NTA and raised questions about irregularities.
CONCLUSION : Alakh Pandey, CEO of Physics Wallah, has filed a Supreme Court petition challenging the National Testing Agency’s random grace mark awarding practice for over 1,500 applicants who took the NEET-UG, 2024. Pandey’s attorney, J Sai Deepak, represented him in front of a vacation bench.