The Supreme Court today said that the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) should take care to ensure that the issues which arose with respect to the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test undergraduate exam for the year 2024 (NEET UG 2024) are not repeated in future.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra said that the NTA should avoid flip flops with respect to safety of strongrooms where question papers are kept, grant of compensatory marks etc.
Pronouncing its judgment in the case relating to NEET UG 2024, the court said that the NTA must now avoid the flip flops which has happened now because it does not serve well. It added that these issues such as rear door being kept open in strong room etc, then granting compensatory marks, then grace marks which led to 44 getting 720/720.
It also highlighted all errors of NTA and thus the committee should identify and rectify these, adding that issues which have arisen must be rectified by the Centre this year itself so that it is not repeated.
Nonetheless, it reiterated that there was no systemic breach in NEET UG 2024 exam beyond Hazaribagh and Patna and, hence no retest would be needed with respect to this year’s NEET. The aforesaid observations were made in the judgment in which the Court turned down the plea to hold re-examination for NEET UG 2024. The Supreme Court had on July 23 refused to order a re-examination.
Earlier, it had held that the evidence before it was not sufficient to show any widespread leaks of question papers as alleged, and any leak was limited to a few students who can be separated from the untainted ones.The detailed judgment on the same explaining the reasons was pronounced on Friday.
Notably, the admissions to medical colleges across the country for undergraduate courses is based on NEET UG score. The NEET-UG exam 2024 was embroiled by allegations of mass question paper leaks and cheating.
Subsequently, multiple NEET candidates had moved the Supreme Court seeking a reexamination. However, there were also students who argued against any retest. The Centre and the NTA had vehemently opposed any retest. They contended that the leak was not widespread but only limited to a few candidates.