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It’s a puzzle I have met often and recognise very well. And it’s a puzzle I have been trying to solve for years, and recognition only adds more rankle to it. The puzzle keeps changing its shape but the question it poses remains the same.

Time and again, childhood as a legal space becomes less visible and children fall between the interstices of law, institutional practice and administrative process. The child rights and legal framework we have is strong, but still this puzzle persists.

My argument is simple: When does an administrative category become so opaque that it makes the person inside it disappear? If you’re 16 or 17 years old and appearing for NEET, you are only a candidate and your status as a minor is not visible. Does the institution stop seeing the child you are and only see the candidate?

The paper leak, grace marks, transparency or the protests in the streets – they are just the backdrop for this post. NEET is simply the clearest and newest place where the puzzle shows up again.

In the 2024 and 2026 NEET-UG litigation, the Supreme Court treated candidates, very rightly, as persons with legally cognisable grievances. It scrutinised the National Testing Agency’s processes and the integrity of the examination itself. For the sake of higher transparency, it ordered centre-wise and city-wise publication of results.

The NTA, the institution in the eye of the storm, for its part, defended its system by pointing to published OMR responses, provisional and final answer keys, the opportunity to raise objections, and the statistics it made available.

The NEET rules say that a candidate must be 17 years old by December 31 of the exam year. The exam is conducted in May so candidates whose birth dates fall between May and December will be 16 or older on the day of the exam.

Also read: The Cost of One Nation, One Examination

It is a moot point but I am still stating it: ‘All persons below 18 are children in the eyes of our Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. So, it is safe to say that there will be 16- and 17-year-olds among the 22-odd lakh examinees.

But if you go looking for the child, you find absence. The UNCRC child rights frame is not found. I could not hear the court saying: some NEET candidates are children because they are under 18 and their views on an issue that directly affects them engages Article 12 of the UNCRC, which says that every child has the right to freely express........

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