The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to order a reexamination for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test undergraduate exam for the year 2024 (NEET UG 2024).
A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that the evidence before it was not sufficient to show a widespread leak of question paper as alleged by the petitioners who moved the Court.
"At the present stage there is absence of material on record to lead to a conclusion that result of the exam is vitiated or that there is a systemic breach of the sanctity of the exam," the Court said while rejecting the plea for retest.
Thus, ordering cancellation of the entire exam would not be justified on application of settled principles propounded by the apex court and on the basis of material on record, the Bench underlined.
The admissions to medical colleges across the country for undergraduate courses is based on NEET UG score.
The petitioners, who are candidates who wrote NEET, had sought reexamination citing irregularities including question paper leaks.
The Court today arrived at the following conclusions:
- Fact that leak of NEET UG 2024 paper took place at Hazaribagh and at Patna is not in dispute;
- Following transfer of investigation to it, CBI has filed its status reports dated July 10. CBI has further filed reports on July 17 and 21. Disclosure shows probe is ongoing and CBI indicates that material shows 155 students drawn from the exam centres at Hazaribagh and Patna appeared to be the beneficiaries of the fraud.;
- Since the probe by the CBI has not attained finality, this court had in a previous order required the Union government to indicate whether certain trends regarding abnormality or otherwise could be drawn from results from 4,750 centres in 571 cities. The Union of India has produced the analysis by IIT Madras indicating position on the basis of data analytics.
- At this stage the court has independently scrutinised the data placed on record by NTA. At the present stage there is absence of material on the record sufficient to lead to the conclusion that the result of the examination stands vitiated or that there is a systemic breach of the sanctity of the examination;
- Data on record is not indicative of a systemic leak of the question paper which would indicate a disruption of the sanctity of the exam;
- Tainted students can be differentiated from the untainted students;
- If the probe reveals increased number of beneficiaries, then action shall be taken against any such student at any stage not withstanding the completion of counselling process. No student who is revealed to have been in this fraud or a beneficiary would be entitled to claim any vested right in continuance of admission;
- Court realises that directing a fresh NEET UG for the present year would be replete with serious consequences which will be for over 24 lakh students who appeared in this exam and cause disruption of admission schedule, cascading effects on the course of medical education, impact on availability of qualified medical professionals in the future and seriously disadvantage the marginalised group for whom reservation was made in allocation of seats.
The NEET UG exam was conducted at 4,750 centres in 571 cities across India besides 14 cities overseas. 24 lakh students appeared for the exam competing for 1,08,000 seats. The exam consisted of 180 questions totalling to 720 marks and one negative mark for wrong answers.
The order was passed after taking into account the arguments of all parties including Central government and NTA who vehemently opposed the plea, saying that the leak was localized and not a widespread one and hence, as per Supreme Court's earlier judgments, a retest cannot be ordered.
During the hearing too, the Court observed that the leak prima facie seemed to be a localised one limited to Patna and Hazaribagh and ordering a reexamination at this stage when a probe into the same by Central Bureau of Investigation is still ongoing, could affect the future of 23 lakh students.
"Can court order re-test when investigation is not complete and that there is a possibility that the leak is not confined to only two places. We are dealing with 23 lakh students. Let us put it both ways. CBI probe in future may reveal a different picture. But equally we cannot today say with any degree of prima facie nature that leak has gone beyond Patna and Hazaribagh to show that it is systemic and spread across the country," the Bench remarked.
Background
Both the Central government and the National Testing Agency (NTA) which conducted the exam
argued against cancelling NEET 2024.
During the
hearing on Monday, the Supreme Court had directed the Central government and the NTA to furnish details about the use of question paper set stored at Canara Bank branches.
While one set of question papers were stored at State Bank of India (SBI), another set of question papers were stored at Canara Bank branches.
The Canara bank set was supposed to be backup in case of any discrepancy or leak of SBI question paper set.
Despite that, the Canara bank paper was apparently used in certain centres.
The Court yesterday asked the NTA to furnish details on this aspect.
