The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to cancel the undergraduate National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2024 held on May 5. The Supreme Court stated that there is no material on record “at the present stage” to prove that a systemic leak of question papers has destroyed the sanctity of the exams held annually for medical admissions across the country.

“At the present stage, there is an absence of material to show that the result of the exam stands vitiated… Data produced city-wise, centre-wise and comparison of results in 2022, 2023 and 2024 do not show a systemic leak of question paper which indicates a destruction of the sanctity of the exam,” Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, heading a three-judge Bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, reasoned.

The judgment seemed to agree with the arguments of the government and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), both represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, that the leaks “so far” looked “localised” to Hazaribagh and Patna in Bihar. The ongoing CBI probe has led to several arrests.

Seeking re-test

However, the lead counsel for the petitioners seeking a re-test, senior advocate Narendar Hooda, countered that the main accused of the gang behind the paper leak was yet to be arrested. Mobile phones used to relay the leaked question papers had not been recovered. He said the government’s confidence that the leak was limited to Patna and Hazaribagh was unfounded. The sanctity of the exam remains questionable unless the Court is convinced that all the tainted persons have been identified.

“The situation is still evolving… NEET-UG 2024 is a patient who has suffered a multiple organ failure,” Mr. Hooda argued. He urged the Court to hold true to its principle that the sanctity of an exam was lost even if one student had benefitted from an illegality. The Chief Justice responded that an entire exam cannot be cancelled, putting the future of over 23 lakh students who appeared for NEET-UG across 571 cities in peril, on the mere hypothesis of the petitioners that the leak was not confined to Hazaribagh and Patna. “Today, we do not have anything before us to show that the leak spread to other parts of the country,” Chief Justice addressed Mr. Hooda.

The Bench acknowledged the government’s viewpoint that cancellation of the exam would have serious consequences on the 23 lakh students, including disruption of the admission schedule of the medical courses, cascading effects on the course of medical education, prejudicial impact on the availability of qualified medical professionals in future besides being a source of serious disadvantage to marginalised students who would have to bear the expenses and logistics of a re-test.

However, the Court made it clear that students identified in future as beneficiaries of the paper leak in the ongoing CBI investigation should not profit from the illegality and be barred from admission.

Change in scores

With the court declining the re-test, the counselling process, which was set to begin on July 24 as informed by the government in court, may commence. However, the rank tally may undergo a change with the apex court endorsing a report from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) that an “ambiguous” Physics question had only one correct answer and not two “possible answers”. The IIT(Delhi) panel had concluded that the two answers mutually excluded each other.

Over 4.20 lakh candidates who opted for the wrong one of the two “possible answers” may now lose the grace marks awarded to them. The previous hearing in court on Monday on the issue revealed that 44 students had achieved the perfect score of 720/720 solely owing to this grace mark. In its order, the court did not follow up on its oral suggestion, made during the hearing, to forego the negative mark for the wrong answer to the question. A negative mark would mean that students who chose the wrong option for that “tricky” Physics question stand to lose a total of five marks.

Further, the court did not intervene on a re-test held for 1,563 candidates who were given extra marks for the time they had lost after mistakenly being given the wrong question paper at their exam centres.

During the hearing, Mr. Mehta informed that only 813 out of 1563 had appeared for the re-test on June 23. “The rest would have decided to not appear for the re-test in June as the court had given them a choice to either attempt the re-test or retain their original results minus the compensatory marks,” he explained.

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