New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned the hearing on a batch of plea seeking a direction for fresh examination for NEET UG, 2024, against the backdrop of alleged paper leakage and other irregularities.
A bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra scheduled the matter for hearing on next Thursday, July 18. The bench, adjourning the hearing, said that the judge and some of the petitioners were yet to go through the replies filed by the Centre and the National Testing Agency.
Amid raging controversy over the sanctity of the prestigious examination, the Union Education Ministry had on Wednesday told the court that a technical analysis of NEET-UG 2024 data carried out by IIT Madras establishes that the marks distribution follows the bell-shaped curve, which is witnessed in any large-scale examination indicating no abnormality and, also the data analysis shows there is no any indication of mass malpractice.
The Centre, in the affidavit, submitted that an exhaustive and elaborate technical evaluation of the data pertaining to the NEET-UG 2024, examination was carried out by IIT, Madras, using the parameters like marks distribution, city-wise, and centre-wise rank distribution and candidates spread over marks-range. “the marks distribution follows the bell-shaped curve that is witnessed in any large-scale examination indicating no abnormality”, said the affidavit, citing the findings given by experts of the IIT-Madras.
The affidavit said there is an overall increase in the marks obtained by students’ specifically in the range of 550 to 720. “This increase is seen across the cities and centres. This is attributed to 25% reduction in syllabus. In addition, candidates’ obtaining such high marks are spread across multiple cities and multiple centres, indicating very less likelihood of malpractice”, said the affidavit.
The Centre said that for the year 2024-25, counselling process will be conducted in four rounds starting from the third week of July. The National Testing Agency, which conducted the test on May 5, 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.
The NTA, in a separate affidavit, provided all the details of the chain of custody of the question paper, which was sought by the apex court, from the time of its preparation to the time of its dissemination to the candidates’ on the day of the examination.
The NTA said the sealed iron boxes containing the question papers were opened 45 minutes before the commencement of the exam and two invigilators and two candidates are required to witness the process of opening the sealed trunks, who are required to certify the process so carried out by signing on the prescribed form.
The NTA said that the video showing a photo of the NEET UG exam paper leaked on Telegram on May 4 was fake and the timestamp was manipulated to create a false impression of an early leak. The NTA said that the alleged paper leak case at Patna has not affected the sanctity of the entire exam.
The apex court on July 8 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 apex court had asked the Union of India and National Testing Agency to inform whether it would be feasible to use data analytics in the cyber forensics unit so that modality can be formed to segregate tainted students from the untainted students.
The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country. The NEET-UG, 2024 was held across 4,750 centres on May 5 and around 2.4 million candidates appeared in it. The results were announced on June 4 due to an early completion of answer-sheet evaluation. Allegations of irregularities, including paper leaks, have led to protests in several cities and sparring between rival political parties.
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