Supreme Court declines to stay NEET counselling again, issues notice to NTA

NEET row: The Supreme Court has tagged the fresh pleas along with pending petitions and posted them for hearing on July 8.

Updated on: Jun 21, 2024, 12:59:02 IST

By HT News Desk

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The Supreme Court has yet again declined to stay NEET-UG 2024 counselling amid massive row over the alleged irregularities in the conduct of the medical entrance exam. The apex court has issued a notice to the National Testing Agency.

The Supreme Court has tagged the fresh pleas along with pending petitions and posted them for hearing on July 8.

On Thursday, the apex court stayed proceedings before three high courts hearing petitions challenging the conduct of the National Eligibility Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 and seeking an independent probe into alleged malpractices involving a paper leak and award of grace marks.

A vacation bench of Justices Vikram Nath and SVN Bhatti issued notice on four transfer petitions filed by the National Testing Agency (NTA), the body that conducts NEET-UG, and 11 other petitions raising similar grievances. The matter was posted along with a batch of pending cases on the same issue coming up for hearing on July 8.

Also read: 'If there is 0.001% negligence...': Supreme Court issues notice to NTA, Centre over NEET

Last week, the court had refused to stay the counselling, observing that even a minor negligence needed to be dealt with thoroughly

"If there is 0.001% negligence on the part of anyone it should be thoroughly dealt with,” the court had said.

The exam was conducted on May 5. The results cameout earlier this month.

After around over 60 students scored full marks in the NEET exam, which is considered one of the toughest exams in the country, medical aspirants claimed there were irregularities in the conduct of the entrance test.

Also read: Supreme Court stays proceedings in HCs on scrapping NEET

There had also been furor over grace marks awarded to some students. After protests, the NTA asked over 1500 medical aspirants to retake the exam.

Meanwhile, after the UGC-NET paper was leaked on the Internet leading to the cancellation of the exam, education minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed the media that a panel has been constituted to make recommendations on reforms in NTA.

"The government is going to form a high-level committee regarding reforms in NTA. The committee will be expected to make recommendations to further improve NTA, its structure, functioning, examination process, transparency and data security protocols. Zero-error testing is our commitment. The panel will be notified soon, it will also have global experts," he said.

With inputs from PTI, ANI

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