We reported the issue immediately to the National Testing Agency (NTA) via the online OMR challenging option. We also wrote an email to neet@nta.ac.in to communicate the issue. However, it looks like they've NOT looked at our challenge and we did not receive any response from NTA. I called their phone support a few times and they've kept someone to tell everyone that "Please send an email" or "Please wait for 2 days". You cannot get anything more than these responses from the phone support person.
In the mean time, NTA went ahead and published the scores for all candidates, yesterday (4th June 2024). Now, we are clueless on what to do. There are NO formal grievance redressal mechanisms in NTA.
My daughter's dream of becoming a doctor came crushing like a pack of cards - despite her hardwork and sacrifices. If she is not really capable of getting good scores - I would not have bothered much. But, if factors that are external to our control are at play (like the issue with the OMR sheet scanned copy), what can we do? Unfortunately, we are helpless and left without any options.
When I did online searches, I noticed that similar issues have been noticed in the past, without any resolution. People have noticed 3 different types of issues:
1. Missing responses from OMR scanned copy
2. Different responses in the OMR scanned copy (when compared to the answers marked by the students)
3. Total scores in the score card much lower than the scores in the OMR scanned copy
Some references:
What are some problems that NTA should immediately look into and fix?
1. Establish transparency - Let us know how the OMR grading process/systems work. Record a short video capturing how the grading process works and make it available for people to understand. (Based on reading tenders in NTA website, it appears to be a complex process where the bubbles marked are read through an OMR reader and images like bar-code thumb-print etc., scanned via an image scanner. It is not clear how the OMR scanned image is created, with this information). If candidates are challenging, please make the "actual picture" of the OMR sheet available to them.
2. Create Grievance Redressal Mechanisms: Create a proper mechanism to track/resolve grievances reported by the candidates. Today, there is no such mechanism that exists. Remember that you are playing with the lives of several lakhs of candidates - who are going to drive the future of India.
3. Improve the website infrastructure - Today, NTA expects everyone to track their website to get updates. The website is extremely flaky - the links result in "page not found" or "server unavailable" errors many times; the website keeps changing almost every day - options/information show up and keep vanishing, content is made available one day and they are removed the next day. It is highly confusing for even the educated parents to follow this. How would uneducated/poor parents manage all of this?
4. Implement mechanisms that enable poor/uneducated to participate - NTA expects a farmer and a mason to hit the refresh button multiple times a day... on their website... if these parents want to get an MBBS admission for their wards. NTA should be sending SMS notifications to everyone about OMR scanned sheet update, score card update etc., Today, NTA sends bulk emails that reached my Inbox 4 hours before the cut-off window for the OMR Sheet challenge. Several people did not even get those emails. Thankfully, I learned about the OMR scanned sheet update through some friends. How do you expect people who are outside of metros to keep track of this (especially the poor / uneducated parents?). Make it inclusive and accessible for them.
5. Bring some professionalism into the whole process - Right from frisking the students during NEET examination ... to publishing the score card, you are treating students/parents as "beggars" (as-if you are throwing some "alms" at them and doing a favor). You are trying to create unnecessary fear in the minds of students / parents. Make the whole process more friendly and professional. Think of the candidates as your "customers" and help improve the overall experience for them.
Our hopes of getting our daughter admitted into an MBBS college have now become a punctured gas balloon buried deep into the mud. I know a blog post cannot turn around the situation and get my daughter admitted to an MBBS college. I'm writing this so that the world knows that there are problems like this in the NEET examination and grading process. I want to increase the visibility of this issue, with the hope that NTA/Govt will take care of these suggestions/recommendations, at least for future NEET batches. That's how you can provide justice for Mitra and several other impacted students in 2024 and before.
Let Mitra be the last student who is impacted by the ruthless bureaucracy and flawed processes of the National Testing Agency.
References:
Scores that Mitra obtained in the mock tests conducted by Aakash Insitute
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