SC orders NTA to publishall NEET marks by centre
Supreme Court orders NTA to reveal NEET-UG 2024 marks by Saturday. Decision on retest depends on localised vs systemic paper leaks. CBI probe details shared.
New Delhi The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the National Testing Agency (NTA) to publish the marks obtained by all students in the NEET-UG 2024 by 12pm on Saturday, along with the city and the centre they appeared in, with the identities of the candidates masked.
The court, which decided to limit its scrutiny of the validity of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test - Undergraduate 2024 (NEET-UG) to two separate instances of paper leaks in Patna and Hazaribagh, emphasised that its decision on scrapping the premier medical entrance examination and ordering a retest will depend on if the breaches were localised or systemic.
The court’s stance was articulated during a hearing by a bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud that underlined that the petitioners, demanding a retest, ought to bring on record concrete evidence of widespread leaks that impacted the sanctity of the entire exam.
“The fact that there was a leak at Patna and Hazaribagh is admitted. The question papers had been disseminated there. We want to ensure whether this was confined to those centres or widespread,” stated the bench, which also included justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
The bench noted that publication of all results was in the interest of transparency, especially in the wake of the students’ grievances about their handicap to argue the matter in absence of centre-wise and city-wise marks that could provide them clarity on the extent of the breach in case a pattern emerges in which some centres or regions were inordinately represented among the successful candidates.
The court also considered the petitioners’ complaint that the IIT-Madras report, which the Centre and NTA have cited to dismiss the averment of widespread leak, referred to data of all 2.4 million candidates but such data were not available to the petitioners for a rebuttal of the report.
“We direct NTA to publish the marks obtained by students at the UG-2024 NEET examination, while, at the same time, without disclosing the identity of the students. The result should be declared city and centre-wise by 12 noon on 20 July 2024 and shall be uploaded on the website of the NTA,” directed the bench despite appeals against such a directive by the SG.
Fixing July 22 to hear the case next, the court demanded the investigation report from the Bihar Police, which initially handled the probe before it was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on June 22. The bench also deferred its decision on the commencement of the counselling process which solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said would begin in the third week of July.
“The material collected by the Bihar Police through the investigation and the report of the Economic Offences Wing of Bihar Police, before the investigation was taken over by the Central Bureau of Investigation, shall be filed with the Court Master by 5pm on 20 July 2024,” the court’s order said.
This year, 2.4 million students sat for the examination at 4,750 centres across 571 cities around the world. But weeks later, protests swept India as thousands of students hit the streets over allegations of question paper leaks, inflated marking and arbitrary allowance of grace marks, even as opposition parties called for a Supreme Court monitored probe into the allegations.The government has repeatedly ruled out a retest, saying leaks were localised and arguing that scrapping the exam will be unfair to successful candidates.
Localised vs systemic leaksThe day-long hearing in the top court focussed on determining the extent of the breach, the latest in a saga of uncertainty surrounding the examination’s validity and potential retest that has kept 2.4 million candidates on tenterhooks for weeks, with their career prospects hanging in the balance.
Of the 2.4 million candidates who took the exam, around 108,000 qualified for the medical seats in government and private medical colleges.
“We can’t order an exam merely because others want to take a chance. We can reorder only if you can show the sanctity of the exam has been impacted greatly,” the bench remarked as it commenced the final arguments in a bundle of petitions filed by the NEET candidates.
While at least 131 candidates press for a retest, more than 250 successful candidates filed applications to oppose the plea.
The court’s observations were particularly pertinent in light of a separate incident at Godhra in Gujarat, where a teacher solicited money to fill in blank answers on OMR sheets but was intercepted before the malpractice could take place. The bench dismissed this as a “localised” incident, making it clear that its examination would focus on the nature of the leak at Patna and Hazaribagh, the timing between the leak and the exam and the scale of dissemination of question paper.
“What we need to decide now is whether the leak was concentrated at Patna and Hazaribagh or was it so widespread that the sanctity of the entire exam has been compromised? Can we cancel the exam only on this basis or does it fall something short of the benchmark? That’s pertinent for us,” observed the bench.
During the hearing, the petitioners alleged conflict of interest against the IIT-Madras director, arguing that he should not have prepared the report because he was on the governing body of NTA.
SG Mehta, however, repelled the submission, contending that the IIT-Madras director happened to be an ex-officio member of NTA only for the purpose of conducting the JEE-Advanced exam for engineering entrance, besides the fact that the present director had nominated someone else to attend the NTA meetings.
The court also sought to know finer details about the candidates who succeeded after they changed the city of their exam centres and registered fresh on April 9 and 10 after a new window was opened pursuant to an order of the Rajasthan high court. SG Mehta and senior counsel Naresh Kaushik argued that there was no possibility of malpractice due to these two factors, saying more than 12,000 candidates who registered in April failed to score the minimum required marks to qualify.
CBI investigationDuring the proceedings, Mehta revealed crucial details from CBI reports about how the NEET exam was compromised at Hazaribagh and Patna even as he maintained that the leak was “localised” and did not involve more than 150 students.
The submission came after senior advocate Narender Hooda, who led the arguments on behalf of the petitioners, said that the leak was systemic and occurred on or before May 3, 2024, when the question papers were deposited in State Bank of India and Canara banks for safe custody. Hooda cited a media report alleging that question papers were transported in an e-rickshaw at Hazaribagh after being sent via courier by a private agency.
Mehta countered this by stating that it was the OMR sheets, not the question papers, that were transported in this manner. Responding, the bench expressed concern over the use of a private courier firm for transporting question papers, especially after collecting ₹400 crore from students as entrance fees.
Mehta then submitted that CBI investigated the entire chain of events, from courier to receipt of question paper at the exam centres. He claimed there was a seven-layer safety mechanism, which included automatic alerts in case of tampering with the question paper during transit.
As the bench sought to know more about the time lag between the leak and the exam, Mehta described how the “breach” occurred at the Oasis School in Hazaribagh on May 5, 2024. He said that an accused entered the exam center at 8:01 am and exited at 9:23 am on that day.
“There was no leak. No leak but there was a breach. We have recovered footages of someone going inside a particular exam centre at 8.02am on May 5 and coming out at 9.23 am,” he said.
The bench, however, wondered how the question paper travelled to Patna if the breach was at Hazaribagh and how the answers were available around 10.15am for the candidates to memorise, as claimed in the CBI reports.
“Will it be possible for them to do it within 45 minutes? 180 questions were to be solved... It appears to be very far-fetched that in 45 minutes, someone took out the question papers and solved them for others to memorise,” said the bench. But Mehta claimed that there were seven solvers, given 25 questions each.
To a question from the bench about the total number of candidates involved and how the question paper landed in Patna when they were leaked at Hazaribagh, Mehta said that not more than 150 students were involved in the breach at Hazaribagh and Patna.
“A meticulous investigation has taken place. The person who went inside and took out the question paper has also been identified...One gang member at Hazaribagh sent it to Patna using WhatsApp. Their modus operandi was not to allow students to take photographs because if the question papers were leaked in a widespread fashion, the exam would get cancelled and nobody would earn any money,” said Mehta.
Parents reportedly paid advance money and postdated cheques ranging from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh, informed the CBI reports, as Mehta explained that the modus operandi included destroying the question papers to prevent further dissemination.
“We are not taking this matter in an adversarial manner nor are we against the students. But the fact of the matter is that breach was localised and it took place a few hours before the exam,” emphasised Mehta, and dispelled claims that high-scoring candidates benefited from the leak by pointing out that the top 100 candidates were spread across 95 centres in 18 states and Union territories.