Supreme Court begins hearing on petitions related to NEET-UG row
The top court was told by a lawyer for NEET-UG aspirants that the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the prestigious exam, has admitted to leaking papers | (Photo: PTI)
The Supreme Court on Monday began hearing a batch of petitions related to the controversial medical entrance examination, NEET-UG 2024.
The Supreme Court was told by a lawyer for NEET-UG aspirants that the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the prestigious exam, has admitted that papers were leaked and the leaked exam questions were circulated through WhatsApp.
First, the bench, comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwla and Manoj Misra, asked the counsel for the parties what emerged from the announcement of the examination results by centre and by city.
The hearing is ongoing.
An analysis of the results released by NTA on Saturday showed that candidates who allegedly benefited from the paper leak and other irregularities did not fare well. However, some centres showed a high concentration of high-performing students, it found.
The voluminous data of over 32 lakh candidates from 4,750 centres was not released in a cumulative format but in a drop-down menu for each centre. The data was released on the direction of the Supreme Court, which is hearing several petitions over the alleged irregularities, while lakhs of aspirants await a final verdict on the fate of the exam.
The performance of the candidates from the centres under examination, such as Oasis School, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, Hardayal Public School, Jhajjar, Haryana, Jay Jalaram International School in Godhra, Gujarat, was comparatively far below par.
On July 18, the court ordered the NTA to announce the results of the controversial exam per center and per city by July 20 at 12:00 noon, while keeping the identities of the candidates secret.
The court had indicated that it wanted to investigate whether candidates who performed in so-called contaminated centres scored higher points than candidates elsewhere.
The court is hearing more than 40 requests, including that of the NTA. The court wants cases pending against it in various courts regarding the alleged irregularities in the exam to be transferred to the Supreme Court. In this way, it wants to avoid a multitude of lawsuits.
More than 2.33 million students took part in the test on May 5 in 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 abroad.
In their earlier submissions to the Supreme Court, the Centre and the NTA had argued that scrapping the exam would be “counterproductive” and would “seriously jeopardise” hundreds of thousands of honest candidates in the absence of evidence of large-scale breach of confidentiality.
The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is conducted by the NTA for admission to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: Jul 22, 2024 | 11:53 AM IST