New Delhi. A Delhi University (DU) professor on Monday said that a controversial physics question asked in the NEET-UG 2024 exam had only one correct answer, not two, leading the Supreme Court to direct IIT-Delhi to constitute a committee of experts to resolve the impasse.
During the day-long hearing of several petitions, including those seeking re-conduct of the NEET-UG exam, which has been mired in controversy due to question paper leak and other irregularities, the court faced a bizarre situation over a physics question. It was argued that the question had two correct answers and the candidates who had given one of the two correct answers were given four marks.
Some lawyers also said that there were three groups of candidates, one of which got minus five marks for a correct answer, another group got four marks for another correct answer, and the third group consisted of those who left the question unanswered either due to lack of knowledge or fear of getting negative marks.
A bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud was told that this had a significant impact on the merit list of successful candidates. Due to this controversy, the court asked the director of IIT-Delhi to form a team of three subject experts.
We sought a response from Naveen Gaur, Associate Professor, University of Delhi and an IIT, Madras alumnus, on this controversial question. The question reads: “Given below are two statements: Statement 1: Atoms are electrically neutral because they have an equal number of positive and negative charges. Statement 2: Atoms of each element are stable and emit their own characteristic spectrum.
In the light of the above statements, choose the most appropriate answer from the options given below:
(1) Statement 1 is false, but Statement 2 is correct.
(2) Both Statement 1 and Statement 2 are correct.
(3) Both Statement 1 and Statement 2 are wrong.
(4) Statement 1 is correct, but Statement 2 is false.
Professor Gaur, who teaches at Dyal Singh College, said option four is the only correct answer. This is clearly contrary to the arguments presented in the apex court that there were two correct answers. The apex court will examine the report of three experts from IIT-Delhi on this question on Tuesday.
Tags: NEET, net exam, Supreme Court
FIRST PUBLISHED : July 23, 2024, 02:20 IST
