New Delhi, June 12: The Supreme Court today cleared the decks for the declaration of the results of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for admission to medical and dental undergraduate courses across the country, staying a Madras High Court order that had embargoed the results.

But while counselling and the rest of the admission process can start, the bench of Justices P.C. Pant and Deepak Gupta cautioned that the admissions would be subject to the court's final verdict on the appeals against the high court order.

In other words, students can be admitted but if the apex court eventually rejects the appeals, the admissions will stand cancelled.

About a dozen students had petitioned the high court alleging the Tamil version of the question paper had been far easier than the English version.

They had argued that such "discrimination" violated Article 14 of the Constitution (equality of all citizens), and that the May 7 exam should therefore be scrapped and a fresh one held.

On May 24, the Madurai Bench of the high court had stayed the results and sought responses from the Centre, the Medical Council of India (the medical education regulator) and the Central Board of Secondary Education, which conducts the exam.

But the Centre and the board (and two students) appealed before the apex court arguing that an indefinite delay in results declaration would hurt the academic and career prospects of lakhs of students across the country.

They also argued that the high court's interim order went against the spirit of the directions passed by the apex court, which had earlier fixed a schedule for the exam.