NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday in its order refused to conduct a retest for the NEET-UG examination noting that there is no material evidence to suggest that there was a systemic breach of the sanctity of the examination.
A three-judge bench of the top court, led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra delivered the verdict after hearing a batch of petitions filed by students, who alleged malpractices and other irregularities in the exam.
"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.On the material placed on record, 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 court noted.
"For the above reasons, we are of the considered view that ordering the cancellation of the entire NEET UG 2024 exam is neither justified on application of settled principles propounded by the decisions of this court (nor) on the basis of material on record," the court said.
It is expected that the counselling would start from July 24.
The CJI said that it is a fact that leak of NEET UG 2024 paper took place at Hazaribagh and at Patna is "not in dispute". Also, following the transfer of the investigation to the CBI, the probe agency has filed its status reports on July 10.
While pronouncing the order, the Supreme Court said that there's no requirement of re-NEET because Madras IIT has done research and they have produced a graph. "On the basis of the graph, there is no mass paper leak. CBI has been represented by one of the General Directors. In his argument, he addressed that paper has been leak at only two places," it said.
The IIT Delhi Director has filed a report on Tuesday to the Supreme Court, after constituting a three-member expert committee, stating that option 4 was the correct answer of the controversial Physics question paper in the NEET-UG exam, 2024.
The IIT Delhi Director had filed the report on Tuesday, after completing with the apex court's Monday order in which it asked him to apprise about the correct answer of a particular Physics question which appeared on the NEET-UG exam.
After the IIT Delhi filed its report pertaining to the ambiguous question, it is now expected that the marks of around 4 lakh candidates, who had marked option 2 as the answer, their marks would be lesser by 5 marks, which would have an impact on overall ranking of these candidates.
Earlier the NTA had awarded them 4 marks, but after the IIT Delhi's reply, this question would be marked as wrong and for that 4 minus and also 1 mark negative, so 5 marks would be lesser now.
The CJI, while reading out the order, also noted that 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 disruption of admission scheduled, cascading effects on the course of medical education, impact on the availability of qualified medical professionals in the future and seriously disadvantageous for the marginalised group for whom the reservation was made in the allocation of seats," the court said.
The apex court in its order noted that the NEET was conducted on May 5 and June 4 results were declared. 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 govt hospital, balance 52000 being in private institutions.
The petitioners sought a direction from the top court for convening a retest on two grounds and they were the question paper was leaked; and there are systemic deficiencies in the modalities conducted for the examination at each and every stage.
"No SOP is followed in the entire process. Entire exam is conducted in an partial and unbiased manner. No CCTV is in place," Senior lawyer Narinder Hooda and advocate Dhiraj Singh, for some of the petitioners told the SC.
NEET-UG examination, conducted by NTA, is the pathway for admissions into MBBS, BDS and 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 24 lakh candidates appeared in it.
