Another revelation sought to be brought about by the Supreme Court led to the directing the National Testing Agency (NTA) to release the complete breakdown of results of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 accompanied by the corresponding city and examination centre. The students’ identities shall not be revealed; as directed by the court, it would be indicated that the names provided are bogus.
The directive was issued during the hearing of a set of petitions that demanded re-testing or complete cancellation of the NEET-UG examination. It followed their alleged cheating through leakage of question papers and violations of the marking standard.
This, in fact, means that there was a leakage in Patna, Bihar, and Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, and question papers were circulated. The bench observed that we have to know whether it was contained only to these centres or spread further.
The court also added that the disclosure of city- and centre-wise marks would assist in substantiating the biased, high-centrist result that would lead to the conclusion that few candidates had studied from the leaked papers.
The NTA, through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, initially opposed the chance request to release the entire outcomes, as the test results are the property of the students. But the court did not change its mind and forced the agency to publish the marks while keeping the students’ identities concealed.
The court’s order came after a day of sharp exchange of arguments on the petition’s plea for a repeat or cancellation of the NEET-UG exam that was sat by nearly twenty-four lakh students aspiring to be Medical practitioners.
The court said it would only order a re-test if the purity exam were `sacrificed to a large extent’ by the alleged paper leaks. Earlier, the NTA mentioned an analysis by IIT Madras regarding this aspect: providing an evaluation related to the change in exam syllabi is responsible for the higher marks.
The CBI that has undertaken the paper leak case investigation has brought six cases of which nine people have been arrested including Rakesh Ranjan alias Rocky viewed as kingpin.
The next session concerning this case has been fixed for Monday, July 22. At that time, the court is likely to focus on the finer details of the dowry bill and the specifics of alleged exam malpractice.
