No stay on counselling: SC seeks NTA response on plea for fresh NEET-UG amid 'paper leak' allegations

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the National Testing Agency on a plea raising allegations of irregularities and malpractices in NEET-UG held on May 5 for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges across the country.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said a lot of questions have been raised and the sanctity of the examination has to be maintained.

The court, while seeking a response from the NTA, which conducted the examination, fixed the petition filed by Shivangi Mishra and others for consideration in July. Similar other pleas already filed are scheduled to come up for hearing in July.

The bench, however, declined for now to stay the counselling process on an oral request made by the petitioners.

Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara appeared for the petitioners.

The petitioners contended after having stumbled upon news of the NEET exam 'paper leak,' students were "shaken to the core". "They are under tremendous stress and anxiety, for they and their family members had nurtured the dream of them becoming a medical practitioner one day," they submitted.

They sought interference of the court as the NTA has published its own circular/notification giving a clean chit to the alleged offenders in the paper leak case - before the ongoing investigations of various agencies concerned were concluded in the backdrop of an FIR registered by the Shastri Nagar Police Station here and further investigation being carried out by EOU, Bihar Police.

They sought a direction to the NTA to recall the results of the examination conducted on May 5 and to conduct the examination afresh after issuing due public notice as a large number of examinees are bound to be affected by the declaration of results, depriving those qualified examinees of 'just and fair opportunity' to compete in seeking admission in a college of their choice.

They also sought a direction to the NTA to take effective and meaningful steps to ensure that malpractices and fraud, in particular leaking of the question papers as has happened in the previous examination, does not happen any further.

Several aspirants of the medical entrance exam NEET have alleged 'inflation of marks' which led to a record 67 candidates bagging the top rank, including six from the same exam centre.

The National Testing Agency, however, denied any irregularities and said the changes made in the NCERT textbooks and grace marks for losing time at the examination centres are some of the reasons the students scoring the higher marks.

The NEET 2024 examination was conducted on May 5, 2024, and the results were announced on June 4, 2024. The Directorate General of Health Science (DGHS), on behalf of the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), is likely to start UG Counselling 2024 tentatively in the first week of July 2024.