NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday came down heavily on the Centre over repeated irregularities in the NEET examination, saying years of ad hoc measures had failed to stop paper leaks and that it would closely monitor reforms to ensure a credible examination system.
A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe said competitive examinations had suffered because of a lack of long-term planning and stressed the need for a strong institutional mechanism instead of temporary solutions.
“Adhocism is what has troubled all these years. We will monitor what steps have been taken. There must be a robust mechanism for all these,” the bench said. The court asked the Centre to explain its roadmap for shifting NEET completely to a computer-based testing (CBT) and the safeguards planned to protect candidates’ data.
“You please tell us what you are doing to shift completely to an online mode. Please tell us how you will protect data when we shift to computer-based testing,” the bench said. Hearing petitions filed by UDF Bharat and the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), the court sought the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) detailed plan for NEET-UG 2026 reforms.
The bench reiterated its earlier direction to the Union Education Ministry to build strong “institutional memory” and “institutional plurality” within the NTA to ensure lasting reforms. The judges also directed the Centre to examine shifting NEET-UG to the CBT model used for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). They warned that digitising the examination without secure end-to-end encryption and protected data transmission could create new risks of paper leaks.
