The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday, July 22, a batch of petitions related to the controversy-ridden medical entrance exam, NEET-UG 2024, which was held on May 5.
On Saturday, the National Testing Agency (NTA) released city- and centre-wise results of the medical entrance exam, which is riddled with accusations of paper leaks and inordinate inflation of marks.
According to the cause list of July 22 uploaded on the apex court's website, a bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra would hear more than 40 pleas, including those filed by the NTA seeking transfer of cases pending against it in Various high courts on the NEET-UG row to the Supreme Court to avoid multiplicity of litigations.
An analysis of data released by NTA indicated that the candidates who allegedly benefited from the paper leak and other irregularities did not do well. Some centres, however, showed a high concentration of well-performing students, it revealed.
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The voluminous data of over 32 lakh candidates from 4,750 centers 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 as lakhs of aspirants await a final verdict on the fate of the exam.
The performance of the candidates from the centers under the scanner — such as Oasis School, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, Hardayal Public School, Jhajjar, Haryana, Jay Jalaram International School in Godhra, Gujarat — was comparatively much below par.
On July 11, the top court had adjourned till July 18 the hearing on the pleas, including those seeking cancellation of the exam, re-test and probe into alleged malpractices in the conduct of NEET-UG 2024, as the responses of the Center and the NTA were yet to be received by some parties.
The bench had observed that it had received a status report from the Central Bureau of Investigation on the progress made in the probe.
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In an additional affidavit filed in the apex court last week, the Center said data analysis of the results of NEET-UG 2024 was conducted by IIT-Madras, which found there was no indication of “mass malpractice” or any localized set of candidates scoring. abnormally high marks.
While hearing the pleas on July 8, the top court had observed that the sanctity of the NEET-UG 2024 has been “breached”.
Saying that a re-test may be ordered if the entire process was affected, the bench had sought details from the NTA and the CBI, including the timing and manner of the alleged paper leak, besides the number of wrongdoers to understand the extent of irregularities. claimed by the petitioners.
More than 23.33 lakh students had taken the test on May 5 at 4,750 centers in 571 cities, including in 14 cities overseas.
The Center and the NTA, in their earlier affidavits filed in the apex court, had said that scrapping the exam would be “counterproductive” and “seriously jeopardize” lakhs of honest candidates in the absence of any proof of large-scale breach of confidentiality.
The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is conducted by the NTA for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country.
