In a significant development, the Supreme Court on Tuesday (June 11) issued notice to the Centre and the National Testing Agency on a petition seeking the cancellation of the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) exam held this year for the Under-Graduate(UG) Medical courses over an alleged paper leak.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said the “sanctity has been affected” and “we need answers”. However, the court refused to stay the counselling process for admission of those who have cleared the exam.
Meanwhile, another few petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court over the NTA’s decision to award grace marks to several candidates in the NEET-UG 2024 examination.
These petitions were filed by Alakh Pandey, the CEO of Physics Wallah, and will be heard on Wednesday. Pandey collected signatures from about 20,000 students, showing that at least 1,500 students have been randomly awarded 70 to 80 grace marks.
Meanwhile, Advocate J Sai Deepak said, “The court has indicated that our matter will also be taken up with the other matters, but the court is clear that it will not stay the counselling process at this stage,”
In response to which, Pandey said, “Here the students were demanding justification on the grounds of the paper leak only but not about the grace marks or anything else, because it was listed on 1st June before results. Our PIL will be listed tomorrow. It is regarding the paper leak as well as the grace marks, the transparencies of NTA and everything else.
The results of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET-UG 2024, announced on Tuesday, June 4, have surprised many, as 67 candidates have achieved the All India Rank 1
The Case
The NEET-UG 2024 results were declared by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on June 4, 2024, following exams were conducted at 4,750 centres for over 24 lakh candidates. Post-result declaration, allegations of irregularities and paper leaks prompted the NTA to address concerns and clarify the measures taken to ensure examination integrity.
After the result declaration, students started raising concerns regarding allegations of irregularities and paper leaks. A significant number of candidates achieved top ranks, with approximately 67 candidates scoring a percentile of 99.997129.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) addressed these issues, attributing compensatory marks to candidates who faced time loss during the exam.
