NEET-UG paper leak: Supreme Court defers hearing to July 18

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday deferred its much anticipated hearing on pleas to conduct fresh examination for NEET-UG, 2024 owing to alleged paper leakage and other irregularities.

A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra scheduled the matter for consideration on Thursday, July 18 as the court and some of the petitioners were yet to go through the responses filed by the Centre and the National Testing Agency.

The NEET-UG for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges across the country was held on May 5 and its results were declared on June 4.

Amid question mark over sanctity of the examination, the Union Education Ministry had on Wednesday told the court a technical analysis of NEET-UG, 2024 data carried out by IIT Madras showed that neither was there any indication of mass malpractice, nor were there local set of candidates being benefitted with abnormal scores. 

The analysis also recorded overall increase in the marks obtained by students specifically in the range of 550 to 720. This increase is seen across the cities and the centres. This is attributed to 25 per cent reduction in syllabus.

In addition, candidates obtaining such High marks are spread across multiple cities, indicating very less likelihood of malpractice, the Union government's response had said.

The government also said the counselling process for NEET-UG would start from third week of July and would be conducted in four rounds.

In its separate affidavit, the National Testing Agency, which conducted May 5 test, said as on date, 16 FIRs have been registered, 14 at its instance while one each by Patna and Godhra police on their own information.

With regard to a Telegram video alleging the question paper was leaked on May, the NTA said the timestamp over there was manipulated to create a false impression of an early leak. It also pointed out the comments and discussion on social media highlighted the fabricated nature of claim over there.

On July 8, the Supreme Court had asked the Centre and the National Testing Agency to inform about the extent of leakage of NEET-UG examination paper and provide the time lag between leakage and examination held on May 5, 2024, observing that there was no doubt that the sanctity of exam has been compromised.

The court had also said if the segregation between beneficiaries of fraud and untainted candidates is not possible then retest has to be held.