The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the National Testing Agency to publish the undergraduate National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2024 results of all 23.33 lakh candidates who appeared in the exam on a centre-wise basis in a bid to transparently check for anomalies in the marks pattern.
A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud ordered the National Testing Agency, which conducts the NEET annually, to mask the identities of the students while releasing the results from each separate centre.
The primary reason for releasing the results is to check if the perfect 720/720 scores were clustered in any particular exam centres, raising suspicions of foul play, including question paper leaks and cheating.
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While the petitioners claim that an unprecedented 67 students, which include multiple candidates from the same exam centres, had achieved perfect scores in 2024, the National Testing Agency (NTA), which dismissed allegations of “mass malpractice” or paper leaks, maintained that only 17 toppers have actually scored 720/720 this year.
The publication of the complete results would help, by following the marks patterns in every NEET exam centre, to examine if the papers leaks had spread across the country like “wildfire” tainting the entire exam, requiring a re-test.
‘Personal property’
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for the Centre, objected to the publishing of the entire results, saying they were the “personal property” of the students. So far, the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) have released the results of the top 100 NEET-UG scorers.
Senior advocate Narendar Hooda, leading the petitioners’ side, said there was no reason for either the Centre or the NTA to “shy away” from publishing the results centre wise as long as the students’ identities were not disclosed. Publication of the entire results would help the petitioners to scour centre or city wise to track down inordinate concentrations of perfect scorers, if there were any, Mr. Hooda argued.
Agreeing, the court initially gave NTA 24 hours, that is by 5 pm on July 19, to upload the results. However, it later relented to extend the deadline to July 20 at noon on a request by NTA counsel, senior advocate Naresh Kaushik.
The Bench, also comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, scheduled the next hearing on July 22. The court did not pass a positive order on an oral plea by petitioners, who include students, to suspend the counselling process. Mr. Mehta informed that the counselling process was scheduled to start from July 24.
Chief Justice Chandrachud said the Bench would hear the case first on July 22 and may, in all eventuality, wrap up the case by the afternoon.
The hearing saw Mr. Hooda argue that the data analytics test done by the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) to detect malpractice was faulty. He said it had spread its study too thin by trying to analyse the data of all 23.33 lakh candidates who appeared in the NEET-UG rather than focus on the first 1.08 lakh whose medical admissions in government and private colleges were a sure shot. The petitioners also said IIT(Madras) was on the governing body of the NTA, which pointed to a conflict of interest.
The court responded to Mr. Hooda’s submission by asking the NTA to find out how many students who changed their cities/centres made it to the first 1.08 lakh and if there was any “skew” in favour of the students who changed their cities. The publication of the entire results, Mr. Hooda said, would aid the petitioners to also pitch in and cull out this piece of information.
Chief Justice Chandrachud said it was an admitted fact that paper leaks happened in Patna and Hazaribagh in Bihar. Both cases are being investigated by the CBI presently. But the court asked the CBI to produce on record the earlier investigation records of the Bihar Police and the State Economics Offences Unit on Monday.
The Chief Justice said he did not believe that somebody had leaked the question papers to “make a national charade of the NEET”.
“People do this to make money. Anybody wanting to make money would not be able to do so without a massive network,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said.
Mr. Hooda referred to the “shoddy” security which was in place in Hazaribagh. He said the NEET papers were taken to the exam centre by an e-rickshaw on May 5.
Hypothesis about leaks
The Chief Justice drew two separate hypotheses about the leaks. One, the paper was leaked before the banks took custody of them on May 3. The other, the leaks happened when the question papers were taken from the banks to the exam centres on May 5.
“The court’s worry is how much was the time period between the breach and the exam. The more the time, the wider the leak,” Chief Justice Chandrachud observed.
Mr. Mehta said the “breach” happened in Hazaribagh on May 5, the exam day, between 8 am and 9.20 am. Referring to CBI probe findings, he said the leak was local. Parents had paid the gang in post-dated cheques. Their children were called in and told to memorise the answers. They were instructed to keep their phones out. The Solicitor General ruled out any massive dissemination of the leaked paper.
“That would have led to the cancellation of the exam. So, the gang wanted the leak to remain small and local,” he said.
The Chief Justice however said the story was “far-fetched”. “Is it possible to have solvers do 180 answers in the paper and then distribute them to the students with only 45 minutes before the exam?” the CJI asked. Mr. Mehta said at least seven “solvers” were employed by the gang.