No Re-NEET: Supreme Court declines to cancel NEET-UG exam

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a plea to order a re-test for NEET UG, 2024, finding that the materials available on record do not indicate that the sanctity of the entire examination was affected due to incidents of paper leakage.

A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that the data on record is not indicative of a systemic leak of the question paper of the examination held on May 5 for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges across the country.

"We are of the considered view ordering cancellation of the entire examination is neither justified on the basis of settled principles propounded by this court on the basis of materials on record," the bench said.

The court also directed the National Testing Agency to revise the result of the NEET-UG following a report by IIT Delhi's experts panel on correct answer to a Physics question where the agency awarded full 4 marks to candidates who selected two options. The marks of about four lakh candidates who chose wrong answer as per the experts panel's report would be affected with it.

In its order pronounced in open court, the bench said that it is a fact that leak of NEET UG 2024 paper took place at Hazaribagh and at Patna. However, the CBI's reports indicated only 155 students from Hazaribagh and Patna were beneficiaries of it.

"At the present stage, there is absence of materials on record to show results of the exam was vitiated or there was a systemic breach in the conduct of the exam," the CJI said.

The court also said directing a fresh NEET UG for the present year would be replete with serious consequences for over 24 lakh students who appeared in this exam.

The court also considered factors like the disruption of admission schedule, cascading effects on the course of medical education, impact on availability of qualified medical professionals in the future and seriously disadvantageous marginalised group for whom reservation was made in allocation of seats.

The court passed its order, after hearing a batch of petitions by students, who sought re-test and proper investigation into the alleged paper leak.

The results of NEET declared on June 4, triggered massive outrage and protest after reports emerged of paper leakage and other irregularities including unprecedented number of students obtaining maximum marks.

Around 23 lakh 33 thousand candidates appeared for the exam. These students were competing for 1.08 Lakh seats of which 56000 seats were in government colleges, and the remaining in private institutions.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre and the NTA and senior advocates Narendra Hooda, Sanjay Hegde and Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara among others for the petitioners argued the matter for four days.

Earlier in the day, in compliance with the apex court's order, the IIT Delhi Director has filed a report on stating that option four was the correct answer of a question in Physics question paper in the NEET-UG exam, 2024.

The court rejected the National Testing Agency's decision to treat two answers as correct due to ambiguity in question. It directed the NTA to re-tally the results in terms of the report by the IIT Delhi's experts committee report.

Earlier, the Union Education Ministry had 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 National Testing Agency also claimed the distribution of marks in NEET UG, 2024 at national, state, city and centre levels was found to be quite normal with no external factor affecting it.