NEET UG 2024: SC asks NTA to publish centre-wise results masking identity of candidates

CJI made it clear that a reexamination cannot be ordered merely because a lakh of students want a reexamination or haven’t gotten admission. He said “can happen only if sanctity of the exam has been affected.”

The Supreme Court on July 18 said it would continue hearing the batch of pleas seeking the cancellation of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) (NEET-UG) 2024 on July 22.

The top court also directed the NTA to publish the marks obtained by students in the NEET-UG 24 exam, while ensuring that the identity of the students is masked. The results must be declared in relation to each centre. The SC asked this exercise to be completed by 12 PM on July 20.

Meanwhile, the top court sought the case diary of Bihar police and EoW report. Petitioners urged the court to stay the counselling, however since solicitor general (SG) Tushar Mehta said that the counselling is likely to happen after July 24, the court  did not pass any such orders.

During the course of the hearing, chief justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud noted that the question paper leak did not appear to happen beyond Patna and Hazaribagh. He said "It appears that wrongdoing has only happened in Patna and Hazaribagh, then after this we are only left with statistics.. can we cancel the examination only on this basis?"

While the petitioners contended that there was an instance of malpractice in Godhra, the CJI rejected this upon being appraised of the the details of the alleged malpractice.

The court embarked on the process of finding out when exactly the leak took place so as to identify whether it was widespread or not. The bench said "There are two possibilities. One the paper gets leaked before the custody of banks. That means, it happened before May 3. Second, the leak happened when the papers left the banks and are bound for the centre.”

Furthermore, CJI observed that if the students were made to memorise the answers on the morning of the exam, someone might have solved the questions before, it means that question paper leaked prior to the day of exam.

However, the Mehta clarified that the question paper was solved in 45 minutes on the day of the exam by seven persons and was later sent by WhatsApp to the members of the same gang in Patna.

The CJI also went through the list of persons who obtained top 100 ranks and said "Out of top hundred, AP got seven, Bihar seven, Gujarat seven, Haryana four, Delhi three, Karnataka 6, Kerala 5, Maharashtra 5, TN 8, UP 6, WB 5...So it appears that the spread in the top hundred marks is distributed across the country, 12 states and one UT.”

A bench led by CJI Chandrachud told petitioners, "Show us that the leak is so systemic and it has affected the exam across the country in such a way that exam has to be cancelled. If we do not agree to re exam then we would like to know what other investigation is needed.”

CJI made it clear that a reexamination cannot be ordered merely because a lakh of students want a reexamination or haven’t gotten admission. He  said “can happen only if sanctity of the exam has been affected.”

Meanwhile, the petitioners alleged that the director of Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT Madras), which did data analytics for NEET and gave a clean chit to the exam, is on the governing body of NTA. However, the government denied it. According to the  government, the person who prepared the report has never been a part of the NTA.

Last week, the Centre in an affidavit opposed a re-test, saying a data analysis by IIT Madras didn’t show there was “mass malpractice” in NEET-UG 20-24.

The retest would burden nearly 24 lakh students who appeared for the exam on May 5. An exhaustive technical evaluation of data was conducted and there was “no indication of mass malpractice”, the Centre said.

The data analysis showed that no local set of candidates benefited, leading to abnormal scores.

On July 8, the CJI said the sanctity of the exam was "compromised" and it was beyond reasonable doubt that the paper was leaked.

The court also rapped the government for being in "denial" and said it should be "ruthless" in dealing with candidates who paid for the leaked exam and those who supplied the question paper.

If the paper was leaked and widely circulated on social media platform such as Telegram and WhatsApp, it would have to order a retest, it said.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), tasked with conducting the examination, has been asked to tell the court when and how the leak took place and how the paper was circulated. The agency has also been asked to find out the time lag between the leak and the examination—if the aspirants had enough time to get the answers.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been directed to file a status report about its probe.

The test has been marred by allegations of paper leak and discrepancies in marking. Aspirants have claimed that an unusually high number of 67 students got a perfect score. The government’s decision to award grace marks to 1,563 candidates, who lost out on time due to the wrong question paper being handed to them, also raised eyebrows. The decision was later withdrawn.