NEET UG 2024: SC adjourns hearing of pleas seeking cancellation; to be taken up on on July 18

Furthermore, the Centre disclosed plans for the commencement of undergraduate seat counseling for the academic year 2024-25, scheduled to begin in four rounds from the third week of July.

The Supreme Court will, on July 18, hear  a bunch of pleas seeking the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2024 examination following allegations of widespread irregularities in the all-India test for admissions to medical colleges. Earlier, it was scheduled to hear the pleas today.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, in its order, said that some of the parties in the case haven't received the affidavits filed by the Centre and NTA and they need to prepare their responses before arguments.

On July 8, CJI Chandrachud observed that the sanctity of the recently held NEET exam was "compromised".

Making strong observations, the apex court held that the sanctity of the exam was compromised and said that it was beyond reasonable doubt that the paper leak occurred.

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.

The court made it very clear that they would have to order a retest if the widespread leak of the question paper had indeed taken place. According to the court, if the questions paper was leaked and widely circulated on social media avenues like Telegram and WhatsApp, they would have to order a retest.

National Testing Agency (NTA), which is tasked to conduct the examination to do a full disclosure and furnish

1) When the leak took place
2) Manner in which the question papers were leaked and disseminated
3) Duration between leak and conduct of the examination.

The NTA was also directed to file the steps it has taken so far on the identification of the leak. More specifically on what it has done to

• identify centres/cities where the leak took place
• modalities followed for identifying the leak
•  number of students who have so far been identified to be beneficiaries

The court has further directed the NTA and the Centre to check whether data analytics could be used to identify suspect cases. It also directed a multi-disciplinary team to probe the incident.

The allegations of question paper leak and discrepancies in marks made headlines in the aftermath of the 2024 general election. It has been alleged that 67 students obtained a perfect score, a higher number than in previous examinations, which sparked controversy. In addition to this, the government decided to award grace marks to 1,563 candidates who lost out on time due to the wrong question paper being handed to them. The government declared NEET UG results on June 4 instead of June 14, raising suspicions further.