New Delhi: Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected pleas for a retest for admissions to 1.08 lakh MBBS seats in govt and private medical colleges in the absence of evidence to establish that the exam paper leak in Hazaribag vitiated the results or breached the examination’s sanctity and integrity, a verdict that lifted the haze of uncertainty that had hung over NEET-UG while also ending the anxiety that had faced those likely to fetch the much-coveted seats in medical colleges across the country.
However, 4.2 lakh students who had got 4 marks even after choosing a wrong option to an atomic theory question stand to lose 5 marks (4 for the question and 1 negative mark for answering it wrongly) as the SC accepted the IIT-Delhi expert committee’s report, which termed only one option as correct.
This will entail a huge reshuffle of ranks. One of the toppers had secured 720 out of 720 despite picking the wrong option, which along with the right option was deemed correct by NTA due to an error in the previous year’s NCERT physics book. Her score will now drop to 715, which will drag her rank several notches down and will be inadequate to get admission to the MBBS course in AIIMS-Delhi, her counsel said.
After a four-day hearing, a bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra dictated the order in open court much after business hours and said, “At the present stage, there is an absence of material on record sufficient to lead to the conclusion that results of the examination stands vitiated or that there was a systemic breach in the sanctity of the examination.”
The bench said a detailed judgment would follow in a few days and that it had dictated the operative portion of the decision keeping in mind the uncertainty in the minds of 23.33 lakh students, who had appeared in NEET-UG 2024. Counselling for admissions to MBBS courses is scheduled to commence on Wednesday.
CJI Chandrachud, who dictated the order, said, “Adding to the absence of conclusive material on record at the present stage, the city-wise and centre-wise data placed on record by National Testing Agency (NTA) and a comparison of NEET-UG results for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024 is not indicative of a systemic leak of question paper (this year), which would indicate destruction of the sanctity of examination.
“In arriving at the ultimate conclusion, the court is guided by the ultimate test whether it is possible to segregate tainted students from those whose candidature does not suffer from any taint.”
The court’s determination also marked validation of the NTA and the Centre, which maintained that the leak in Hazaribag was a localised affair and did not compromise the integrity of the exam and, therefore, NEET-UG need not be scrapped.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta and CBI additional director Krishna informed the court that so far, the probe had found that the impact of question paper leak was limited to Hazaribag and Patna and that only 155 candidates benefited from it, even though only two of them secured more than 570 marks. The bench took note of Mehta’s argument that candidature of the 155 candidates had been cancelled and they may get debarred from appearing in NEET-UG in future. The SG also said admission of any candidate, if later found to have indulged in wrongdoing or taken advantage of question paper leak, would be cancelled as and when it was detected.
The bench said, “If investigation reveals involvement of an increased number of beneficiaries (of question paper leak), then action shall be pursued against those students who are found involved in wrongdoing at any stage, notwithstanding the completion of the counselling process. No student who has engaged in acts of fraud and is a beneficiary of malpractices would be entitled to claim vested right to admission in future.”
Accepting Mehta’s argument on the leak being localised given the fact that the test was conducted in 4,750 centres in 571 cities and that cancellation of the entire examination would cause serious inconvenience to honest students who had assiduously prepared for the test for three to four years, the bench said, “The court is also mindful of the fact that directing a fresh NEET-UG test for the present year would be replete with serious consequences as more than 2 million students took the examination.
“It would disrupt admission schedules for the medical courses, have a cascading effect on medical examinations, prejudicially impact availability of qualified medical professionals in future, and seriously disadvantage students from marginalised groups — SC, ST, OBC and EWS — for whom reservation has been made in the allocation of seats.”
The bench further said, “For the above reasons, we are of the considered view that ordering cancellation of the entire NEET-UG examination is neither justified on the application of the settled position of this court or on the basis of the material on record.”
Assuring the petitioners, who through lead counsel Narender Hooda and Sanjay Hegde had pleaded for a retest, the bench said it would independently verify the data submitted by NTA even after IIT-Madras on application of data analytics had found no abnormal trend in the results of NEET-UG 2024 in various centres, including Hazaribag and Patna.
The SC said individual grievances of candidates, including improper evaluation of their OMR (answer) sheets, would have to be raised before jurisdictional high courts after withdrawing their pleas from the apex court.
