CJI-led Supreme Court Bench to hear on Monday petitions seeking scrapping of NEET-UG 2024 exam

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, July 7

Amid allegations of paper leak and other irregularities, the Supreme Court will hear on Monday petitions seeking scrapping of NEET-UG 2024 examination held on May 5 and conducting it afresh.

There is another set of petitions, including the one filed by 56 Gujarat-based successful medical aspirants, seeking to restrain the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) from going for a re-test.

Both sets of petitions – totalling 38 — are listed before a Bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra.

The top court has so far refused to stay the counselling of the successful candidates for admissions to MBBS, BDS and other courses.  The Union Health Ministry on Saturday refuted reports of postponement of NEET-UG counselling, saying the process was yet to be notified.

Earlier, the NTA had told the top court that counselling would begin on July 6. However, now it’s learnt that counselling will begin in the third week of July as the process of issuing permission letters to a section of medical colleges was under way and additional seats were likely to be added.

Both the Centre and the NTA — which conducts the NEET-UG test – have opposed scrapping the examination.

In an affidavit filed in the top court, the Centre said scrapping the entire examination would seriously jeopardise lakhs of honest candidates who didn’t adopt any unfair means.

“In the absence of any proof of any large-scale breach of confidentiality in a pan-India examination, it would not be rational to scrap the entire examination and the results already declared,” the Union Ministry of Education said in an affidavit filed in the top court.

“It is submitted that in any examination, there are competing rights that have been created whereby the interests of a large number of students who have taken the examination without adopting any alleged unfair means must not be jeopardised,” the affidavit read.

“The Union of India remains committed to protecting the interests of lakhs of students who have attempted the question paper fairly and after years of hard work, without trying to obtain any illegal advantage,” the Centre submitted.

In a separate affidavit, the NTA also opposed cancellation of the controversy-ridden NEET-UG 2024, saying it “would be hugely counterproductive and significantly harmful to the larger public interest, especially to the career prospects of the qualified candidates”.

Around 24 lakh students appeared for NEET-UG 2024 examination 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.

A large number of students protested in Delhi on June 10 demanding a probe into alleged irregularities in NEET-UG 2024. They alleged that grace marks led to 67 students sharing the top rank.

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

On June 18, the Supreme Court had said 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.

Following scrapping of the grace marks given on account of loss of time to 1,563 NEET-UG 2024 candidates, they were given an option of appearing again on June 23 for the test to secure admission to MBBS, BDS and other courses.

The NTA has already 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 the NTA.