New Delhi: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan denied allegations of a paper leak in the undergraduate medical entrance test (NEET-UG) and said the government was ready to answer to the Supreme Court hearing the matter.
Talking to reporters in Delhi on Thursday, Pradhan said allegations against the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the exam, were unfounded, as it was “a very credible body”.
The minister also said that no student, who appeared for NEET UG 2024, would face any disadvantage because the central government had decided to cancel grace marks given to 1,563 students to compensate for the loss of time they suffered on exam day. This was apparently because a wrong set of question papers was distributed at six centres which delayed the exam at those centres by 40 minutes.
Pradhan said a retest would be conducted for these 1,563 candidates with an option for them to opt out of the test if they wished to do so. In that case, their original mark would be considered.
Insisting there was no corruption, Pradhan said 24 lakh students had appeared in the examination this time. “The Supreme Court has heard the matter today and this issue is regarding 1,500 students. The government is ready to give answers to the court. This specific issue is being taken into consideration and a committee of academicians has been formed (to look into the case of these 1,563 students). The NTA successfully conducts three major examinations – NEET, JEE and CUET… We will take action against people responsible,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Congress has demanded a Supreme Court-monitored investigation into allegations that this year’s National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) paper was leaked, questioning Pradhan’s assertion that there was no evidence of such malpractice.
Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi told reporters that while the NEET row would be raised by the Opposition in the upcoming Lok Sabha session, the government should desist from issuing clean chits to itself “without even carrying out an investigation”.
“He (Pradhan) is issuing a clean chit on what basis? He has not even carried out an investigation. There are voice recordings showing how people are demanding up to Rs 30 lakh for NEET question papers. It seems the government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has not learnt any lesson from the setback in the elections,” Gogoi said.
The ongoing NEET controversy erupted on 4 June when the NTA declared the results of the medical entrance. Of the over 24 lakh candidates who appeared this time, an unprecedented number of students got the perfect score of 720. Many of them were from the same coaching centre.
Initially, the NTA attributed the scores to grace marks given to the 1,563 candidates due to an error in the NCERT’s class 12 textbook based on which NEET question papers are prepared. But protests broke out and many moved high courts and even the Supreme Court with petitions demanding the entrance test be held afresh.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court said it would not stay the counselling process for the admissions after the central government submitted it had cancelled the decision to give grace marks and those 1,563 candidates would be given the option to either take a retest or go ahead with final scores minus the grace marks.
Gogoi said that apart from reviewing the case of students who were given grace marks, the government should carry out a full-fledged investigation, ideally by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
“But considering how many of our demands to set up CBI investigations have been rejected in the past, we ask that a Supreme Court-monitored investigation take place in the NEET case. In any case, any in-house investigation carried out by the NTA cannot possibly be without bias,” Gogoi said.
The Congress MP-elect from Jorhat also criticised Modi over his “silence” on the issue.
“The PM is busy attending swearing-in ceremonies, foreign trips. He used to hold charchas with students on exams before the elections. Why is he not doing that now? What is the pressing need to go abroad? He is once again silent as he was in the case of Manipur and terror attacks in Jammu,” Gogoi said.
Govt withdraws grace marks
The education minister’s comments came hours after the central government told the Supreme Court about its decision to hold a retest for 1,563 students who were awarded grace marks to compensate for the time loss they reportedly suffered during the NEET exam held on 5 May.
Advocate Kanu Aggarwal informed a vacation bench, led by Justice Vikram Nath, that the candidates who got less than the allotted time to write the exam for undergraduate medical college admissions would be given the option to retake the exam or forgo the grace marks awarded.
This decision, he told the bench, was taken by the high-level committee constituted by the NTA.
The court was hearing a set of fresh petitions challenging this year’s NEET, including the move to allot compensatory marks to the 1,563 students.
Petitioners have also questioned the shocking surge of top scores in NEET, with many claiming malpractices, cheating and irregularities in the exam.
The retest would be held on 23 June followed by results on 30 June. The admission process would commence on 6 July, the bench was told.
If the 1,563 students choose to take the retest, their earlier NEET score will stand cancelled and the new marks scored in the re-exam would be counted instead.
If these students choose not to take the retest, their original scores would remain but without counting grace marks awarded earlier on account of the loss of time, Aggarwal told the court.
On Tuesday, the top court issued notice to the central government and the NTA on a plea seeking the cancellation of NEET-UG 2024 exams over allegations of the paper leak.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said the “sanctity has been affected” and “we need answers”. However, the court refused to stay the counselling process for admission of those who have cleared the exam. “Let the counselling start. We are not stopping the counselling,” Justice Nath had said, while Justice Amanullah told the NTA counsel, “It’s not so simple that because you have done it (conducted the exam), it’s sacrosanct. We need answers for that… The sanctity has been affected. So we need answers.”
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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