The Supreme Court of India will hear a batch of petitions against the NEET-UG 2024 exam on Monday.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: The Supreme Court would take up on Monday a batch of pleas related to the controversy-ridden medical entrance exam NEET-UG 2024, including those alleging paper leakage and other malpractices in the May 5 test and seeking a direction to conduct it afresh.
A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra would consider over three dozen petitions on July 8.
Notably, the CBI has already started its investigation into the allegations and made some arrests in the matter after taking over the probe on June 23.
After the controversy, the government also set up a high-level committee of experts headed by Dr K Radhakrishnan, former Chairman, ISRO and Chairman, BoG, IIT Kanpur, to suggest effective measures for conducting transparent, smooth and fair conduct of examinations by the National Testing Agency.
The Centre and the National Testing Agency, which conducted the test on May 5, and declared the results on June 6, had already filed their separate affidavits, saying in the absence of any evidence of a widespread breach of confidentiality, cancelling the exam in entirety would be counterproductive and seriously jeopardise lakhs of honest students.
Petitioners particularly candidates and educationists have filed their petitions for re-test, relying upon the police FIRs filed by Delhi, Patna and Gujarat police on irregularities during the examination.
Ahead of the scheduled hearing on July 8, the counselling for NEET UG, 2024, which was earlier proposed to begin from July 6, has also been postponed by the authorities till the end of the month, awaiting the outcome of the hearing in the apex court.
The Supreme Court had earlier declined to stay the proposed counselling for admission to undergraduate courses in government and private medical colleges across the country.
In the matter, the Supreme Court had on June 13 approved a decision taken by the Centre to withdraw compensatory or grace marks allotted to 1563 candidates of NEET-UG 2024 for time loss during the exam and hold an optional re-test for them on June 23.