NEET UG 2024 Hearing Highlights: Supreme Court refuses to order re-exam

NEET UG 2024 Hearing Highlights: The Supreme Court on July 23 refused to order a re-exam of NEET UG 2024 saying that at the present stage there is absence of material on record to lead to conclusion that result of the exam is vitiated or that there is a systemic breach of the sanctity of th exam.

“Data on record is not indicative of a systemic leak of the question paper which would indicate a disruption of the sanctity of the exam,” the court said while hearing on the a batch of pleas seeking cancellation, re-test and a court-monitored probe into the NEET UG 2024 exam held on May 5.

A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra is hearing the matter.

The Court said that during the hearing it has realised that directing a fresh NEET UG for the present year would be replete with serious consequences which will be for over 24 lakh students who appeared in this exam and cause disruption of admission schedule, cascading effects on the course of medical education, impact on availability of qualified medical professionals in the future and seriously disadvantageous for the marginalised group for whom reservation was made in allocation of seats.

During the hearing, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) confirmed before the top court that the paper leak in the NEET UG case had taken place in Hazaribagh centre in Jharkhand. A CBI office said in the court that some gadgets of the involved gang were burnt, and a few others were recovered on July 22 which will now be investigated.

Earlier, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said that the court had received the IIT Delhi report led by director Prof Banerjee and it says option 4 is the correct answer.

On July 22, the top court asked the Director of IIT, Delhi to constitute a three-member expert committee to give their opinion regarding the correct answer to an multiple choice question of NEET-UG 2024, for which the NTA awarded marks for two options.

JPC probe demanded

An association of central university professors has demanded the constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe into the alleged irregularities in the NEET UG 2024 exam. The Federation of Central Universities Teachers’ Association (FEDCUTA) also called for immediate scrapping of the National Testing Agency (NTA) that conducts the exam for admission to medical colleges.

NTA's Additional Affidavit

In its affidavit, the NTA has refuted petitioners’ allegation of conflict of interest on the part of IIT-M Director, who prepared the data analytics report. The petitioners in the paper leak case have also filed an Intervention Application (IA) in the Supreme Court. The application has requested a retest for the nearly 3.5 lakh top scorers in the test. The petitioners said that they too have scored fairly high marks on the test — from 650 to 680 out of the total 720 marks.

What happened on July 18?

In the July 18 hearing, the top court also flagged the NTA's “hypothesis" that the paper was “leaked", solved and memorised by students within just 45 minutes. The lawyer appearing for one of the petitioner alleged that there was increase in the syllabus for the exam and the changes were notified just few months before. He also said the transportation of the question papers was compromised in Hazaribag.

Earlier in the day, CJI DY Chandrachud told the petitioners that they needed to prove that the paper leak was ‘systemic’ and affected the entire examination so as to warrant the cancellation of the entire exam. The re-examination has to be on concrete footing that the sanctity of entire test was affected, the CJI said, according to a report on legal news website LiveLaw.

What is the government's version?

The Union government has, in its affidavit, informed the Supreme Court that there was no evidence of widespread cheating or specific groups of candidates unfairly benefiting from abnormal scores in NEET UG 2024. The government also informed the Court that the Ministry of Education had requested IIT Madras to conduct comprehensive data analytics of the NEET-UG 2024 results.

NEET-UG 2024 was taken by 23.33 lakh students on May 5 across 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 cities overseas. Conducted by the NTA, NEET UG is the entrance test for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, and other related courses in government and private institutions nationwide.

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NEET UG 2024 Hearing Highlights: Supreme Court refuses to order re-exam

NEET UG 2024 Hearing Highlights: The Supreme Court has refused to order a re-exam for want of material on record to lead to conclusion that results, announced on June 4, is vitiated or that there is a systemic breach of the sanctity of the exam held on May 5.