CJI-led Bench to hear on July 8 petitions seeking scrapping of NEET-UG 2024

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, July 2

A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud will hear on July 8 petitions seeking scrapping of NEET-UG for alleged paper leak and irregularities.

According to the cause list for July 8 uploaded on the top court’s website, as many as 26 petitions were listed before the CJI-led Bench — which also included Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra.

So far, the top court has refused to stay the counselling of the successful candidates for admissions to MBBS, BDS and other courses.

Around 24 lakh students appeared for NEET-UG 2024 conducted on May 5 by the NTA across 4,750 centres in 511 cities and 14 centres abroad for admission to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in more than 700 government and private institutions.

As many as 67 students got a perfect score of 720 out of 720 and some of the Rank 1 holders had the same sequence of roll numbers, which raised suspicion of malpractice and irregularities. The majority of them were from the same examination centres in Rajasthan (11), Tamil Nadu (8), Maharashtra (7), Haryana (6) and four each from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. In 2019 and 2020, there was one topper each while there were three toppers in 2021, one in 2022, and two in 2023.

Last month, a large number of students protested in Delhi on June 10 demanding a probe into alleged irregularities in NEET-UG. They alleged that grace marks led to 67 students sharing the top rank.

The matter has since been handed over for probe to the CBI which has made several arrests in connection with the alleged paper leak.

Amid allegations of paper leak and other malpractices in NEET-UG, the top court had earlier this month issued notices to the Centre, NTA and others on petitions seeking scrapping of NEET-UG, a fresh examination and a court-monitored probe into the paper leak.

Even if there was “0.001 percent negligence” on the part of anyone in the conduct of the examination, it should be thoroughly dealt with, the top court had said on June 18.

Following scrapping of the grace marks given on account of loss of time to 1,563 NEET-UG candidates, they were given an option of appearing again on June 23 for the test to secure admission to MBBS, BDS and other courses.

On Monday, NTA announced the revised rank list after issuing the results of the June 23 re-test. The number of candidates sharing the top rank was reduced to 61 from 67 in the revised results announced by NTA.