New Delhi: The Supreme Court Monday heard Public Interest Litigations seeking re-conduction of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2024 by the National Testing Agency, and said that the sanctity of the exam has been compromised and if the leak beneficiary is not identified, the retest must happen.
The three-judge bench, led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, called for the formation of a multi-disciplinary committee, which must include experts and should not be solely government-led, given the exam’s prestige.
“The sanctity of the NEET exam has been compromised, and a multidisciplinary probe is required in the NEET UG case,” said CJI Chandrachud during the hearing.
The apex court also observed that cancelling an exam should be a measure of the last resort, and sought clarification on the number of students impacted by withholding of results due to leaks and their distribution across states.
“Let us not be in denial about what happened. If the modality of the paper leak is through electronic means, such as social media, it is possible that the leak is widespread,” the chief justice said.
The NEET UG results were declared by NTA on 4 June, ten days before the scheduled date. Sixty-seven students had secured All India Rank 1 with a percentile score of 99.997129.
The Solicitor General informed the court that comprehensive information would be submitted by Wednesday. The next hearing will take place on 11 July.
The court has directed the NTA to fully disclose details about the nature of the leak, the locations where it occurred, and the time lag between the leak and the exam. It was observed that if guilty candidates cannot be identified, a retest may be ordered.
“If students were asked to memorise on the morning of the exam, the leak might not have been so widespread. If we can’t identify candidates who are guilty of wrongdoing, a retest has to be ordered,” the court observed.
The chief justice also called for focus on enhancing exam security to prevent future leaks and measures to identify beneficiaries if the entire exam is not cancelled. The court noted petitioners’ concerns about a rise in perfect scores, contrasting with past figures, and asked whether percentile distribution favours top scorers.
“Assuming that the government does not cancel the exam, what will it do to identify beneficiaries of question paper leaks?” questioned the court.
“We will give you a day. We want all petitioners’ lawyers, asking for a retest, to provide us with one set of submissions by Wednesday. We want you all to sit down and give us one consolidated set of submissions, not exceeding 10 pages,” the chief justice said.
He said that they must identify whether the whole exam was affected, and if it is possible to identify wrongdoers, in which case a retest can be ordered for those students only.
Approximately 24 lakh students had applied for this year’s NEET exam. Following the results, significant rank inflation was observed, prompting students and parents to protest against the NTA over irregularities. This led to the filing of multiple PILs in the Supreme Court.
The grievances highlighted in the PILs pertained to the high number of candidates sharing Rank 1 with six students from one centre achieving the top score, a drastic increase in the cutoff compared to previous year, and alleged malpractices at exam centres. Many PILs were tagged together for Monday’s hearing.
The court had asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to file a status report regarding all FIRs.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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