Supreme Court declines re-test of NEET-UG 2024, says sanctity of exam not breached

Supreme Court

Hearing a batch of  petitions challenging NEET-UG 2024 exam, the Supreme Court on July 23 declined the request for a re-test of the examination. The court observed that there are no conclusive evidence to call for a re-test.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra heard the matter. The bench noted that there were systemic deficiencies.

Reading out the judgement, the CJI observed in this batch of case, the central issue being raised before this court is that a direction be issued for convening a re-test on the ground that the leak was of the question paper and that there was systemic deficiencies in the conduct of the exam.

The NEET-UG exam was conducted at 4,750 centres at 571 cities besides 14 cities overseas.

SC held "At present stage there is an absence of material on record to lead to a conclusion on whether there is a systematic breach to the sanctity of examination. The data which is produced by National Testing Agency (NTA) both city wise and centre wise is not indicative of any systemic leak of the question paper which is indicative of destruction of the sanctity of exams."

The court held that if the the investigation reveals that more people benefitted of the paper leak, action can be pursued against them at any stage notwithstanding conclusion of the counselling process.

The apex court made the following observations:

a) The fact that leak of NEET UG 2024 paper took place at Hazaribagh and Patna is not in dispute.

b) Following the transfer of the investigation to it, CBI has filed its status reports on July 10, 17 and 21. The disclosures by CBI investigation is continuing. However, at the present stage about 155 students drawn from Patna and Hazaribagh appear to beneficiaries of fraud.

c) Since investigation is not complete, SC asked the Union government to indicate if any trends can be drawn from the 4750 centres in 571 cities.

d) Government has produced a report of IIT- Madras. The court has scrutinised data submitted by NTA independently

Merit list to change:

While the Supreme ruled against holding a retest for NEET examination, it however passed an order that is likely to disrupt the current merit list. The court accepted IIT-Delhi's report on an ambiguous question that allegedly had two answers in two different text books.

According to the Solicitor General, over 4 lakh students had answered the question based on what was given in an older edition while over 5 lakh students relied on the latest edition.

As a consequence of this, the merit list is likely to change.

On July 22, the court directed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to constitute a three-member panel to decide on the correct answer for a question in the NEET-UG 2024 which had two answers in two editions of NCERT text books.

The lawyers on July 22, contended that an edition of the text book prior to 2018 showed one answer as correct, while the 2019 edition showed another answer as correct. On July 20, the National Testing Agency, responsible for conducting the exam for admission to more than 700 government and private institutions, published centre-wise results of the test on the directions of the court.

Around 24 lakh students sat for the exam conducted on May 5 across 4,750 centres in 511 cities and 14 centres abroad for admission to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and such courses to fill 1.08 lakh seats.

During the previous hearing on July 18, the CJI said, “It appears that wrongdoing (paper leak) 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?"

Last week, the Centre in an affidavit opposed a re-test, saying data analysed by the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras didn’t show there was “mass malpractice” in the entrance exam.

This year, the exam has been marred by allegations of paper leak and discrepancies in marking. Several medical students have been arrested in the case for allegedly leaking paper or impersonating an aspirant in exchange for hefty payments.