The Supreme Court began hearing petitions on Monday, July 8, seeking to cancel the NEET-UG 2024 exam over alleged malpractices and a paper leak. A three-judge bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud is currently hearing petitions related to NEET. Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra are also part of the bench. Several students and coaching institutes have filed pleas challenging the results of NEET UG 2024. The Supreme Court on Monday, while hearing pleas over the NEET-UG 2024 matter, said if sanctity of the exam is lost, then re-test has to be ordered, aiding that cancellation of the exam is "extreme last resort". The Supreme Court was hearing on Monday more than 30 pleas related to the controversy-ridden medical entrance exam NEET-UG 2024, including those alleging irregularities and malpractices in the May 5 test and seeking a direction to conduct it afresh.
During the hearing, counsel for some petitioners sought re-test and told the Supreme Court that identification of tainted and untainted is not possible. The apex court also asked the central government and the NTA about action taken over the matter, noting that there was no doubt that the leak of question paper has taken place."No question that paper has been leaked, we are determining the extent of leak... Are we still in the process of identifying students who were beneficiaries? If we are [...], we will have to cancel the exam. Cancellation of exam of 24 lakh students is a matter of extreme last resort," the Supreme Court said on Monday.
National Testing Agency (NTA) conducted the NEET UG 2024 exam on May 5. Since the day of the exam, the NEET exam was been caught up in a series of controversies such as alleged paper leaks. Following the declaration of the NEET UG results, a major uproar regarding the results surfaced after it was announced that 67 students had topped the exam, NEET UG 2023 had a total of two topppers.
Afterwards, it was announced that NTA had awarded grace marks to students who had suffered loss of time at their exam centres on May 5.On June 11, a plea in the Supreme Court called for the exam to be re-conducted. Upon hearing the petition, the top court stated that the sanctity of the NEET UG exam had been compromised and called on responses from the Central Government and NTA. However, after major protests and backlash, NTA told the Supreme Court that it will be cancelling the grace marks of 1,563 students and offer them re-exam.
During the hearing on Monday, the Supreme Court said there are "certain red flags such as 67 candidates scoring 720/720, adding that in previous years, the proportion was very low."If paper leak is taking place through Telegram, WhatsApp and electronic means, then it spreads like wildfire," the top court said on Monday on NEET-UG 2024. "We have to identify the beneficiaries. Anybody who has breached is not entitled to... more than the number of beneficiaries, we want to know what action was taken by government and the NTA," the Supreme Court said.