New Delhi, July 04
Ahead of the July 8 hearing on petitions seeking scrapping of NEET-UG 2024 over alleged paper leak and irregularities, as many as 56 Gujarat-based successful medical aspirants have moved the Supreme Court seeking to restrain the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) from going for a re-test. A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud is scheduled to hear on Monday petitions seeking scrapping of NEET-UG 2024 Examination held on May 5. So far, the top court has refused to stay the counselling of the successful candidates for admissions to MBBS, BDS and other courses.
The petitioners from Gujarat contended that re-conducting NEET-UG would not only be unreasonable and harsh for the honest and hardworking students but also would lead to the infringement of the Right to Education and therefore violative of Article 14 (right to equality) of the Constitution.
They sought a direction to the Centre and the NTA to identify and punish the examinees who indulged in unfair means, identify the centres and take appropriate action where any “compromise to the established guidelines for NEET-UG 2024 examinations has been done.
Around 24 lakh students appeared for NEET-UG 2024 Examination conducted on May 5 by the NTA across 4,750 centres in 511 cities and 14 centres abroad for admission to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in more than 700 government and private institutions.
As many as 67 students got a perfect score of 720 out of 720 and some of the Rank 1 holders had the same sequence of roll numbers which raised suspicion of malpractice and irregularities.
The majority of them were from the same examination centres in Rajasthan (11), Tamil Nadu (8), Maharashtra (7), Haryana (6) and four each from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. In 2019 and 2020, there was one topper each while there were three toppers in 2021, one in 2022, and two in 2023.
Last month, a large number of students protested in Delhi on June 10 demanding a probe into alleged irregularities in NEET-UG 2024. They alleged that grace marks led to 67 students sharing the top rank.
The matter has since been handed over for probe to the CBI which has made several arrests in connection with the alleged paper leak.
Amid allegations of paper leak and other malpractices in NEET-UG 2024, the top court had earlier this month issued notices to the Centre, NTA and others on petitions seeking scrapping of UG-NEET 2024, a fresh examination and a court-monitored probe into the paper leak.
Even if there was “0.001 percent negligence” on the part of anyone in the conduct of the examination, it should be thoroughly dealt with, the top court had said on June 18. Following scrapping of the grace marks given on account of loss of time to 1,563 NEET-UG 2024 candidates, they were given an option of appearing again on June 23 for the test to secure admission to MBBS, BDS and other courses.
On July 1, the NTA announced the revised rank list after issuing the results of the June 23 re-test. The number of candidates sharing the top rank was reduced to 61 from 67 in the revised results announced by the NTA.
