New Delhi: The Supreme Court Thursday heard a batch of petitions regarding alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG 2024, in which aspirants are seeking a re-conduct of the examination.
During the hearing, the court directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to upload city-wise and centre-wise results of the exam, while masking the identity of the aspirants, on its official website. The NTA must complete this exercise by 20 July.
The Chief Justice of India emphasised that the results should be published without revealing the identity of the candidates. “We direct NTA to publish the marks obtained by students in the NEET-UG 2024 exam while ensuring that the identity of the students is masked. The results should be declared in relation to each centre and city separately,” CJI D.Y. Chandrachud said, before adjourning the case until Monday.
The petitioners had complained that they were not able to ascertain the centre-wise marking pattern because the NTA had not published the results of all candidates.
“Petitioners have submitted that it would be appropriate if results of the NEET-UG 2024 exam are published on the website to bring about some transparency on the centre-wise marks obtained by candidates,” said the court.
Many other important issues were also raised by the Supreme Court during the hearing, from how much money the government makes from conducting the NEET-UG exam to addressing the admitted leaks at Patna and Hazaribagh.
When the CJI asked about the distance between Patna in Bihar and Hazaribagh in neighbouring Jharkhand, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta explained that a gang member in Hazaribagh sent the paper through WhatsApp to avoid widespread leaks.
The CJI addressed the issue of admitted leaks, stressing the need to determine if the breach was widespread. He also acknowledged that not knowing the state-wise or centre-wise pattern of results is a disadvantage for aspirants.
The CJI also inquired about the alleged paper leak that happened in Godhra. In response, the NTA counsel informed the court that a total of 2,513 aspirants appeared for the NEET-UG 2024 at two centres in Godhra, and only 18 came within the 1.08 lakh cut-off.
“Godhra is not an example of a widespread paper leak. The only leaks are now in Hazaribagh and Patna. Out of 61 who got perfect scores, only 17 benefited. Should we cancel the entire exam based on these inputs?” remarked the CJI.
The CJI also inquired about “how much money” the government makes from conducting the NEET-UG exam and was told that the NTA makes around Rs 400 crore, of which Rs 300 crore is incurred on expenditure.
Further, the CJI asked if the NTA engaged with a private company to “transport question papers”.
During the last hearing, the three-judge bench led by the CJI had 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 NEET-UG 2024 results were declared by NTA on 4 June, ten days ahead of schedule. As many as 67 students secured All India Rank 1 with a percentile score of 99.997129.
Approximately 24 lakh students applied for the exam this year. Following the results, significant rank inflation was observed, prompting students and parents to protest alleged irregularities. This led to 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 the previous year, and alleged malpractices at exam centres. The matter will be heard next by the Supreme Court Monday.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)