In a significant ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to release the results of the NEET-UG 2024 examination by noon on July 20, ensuring the confidentiality of candidate identities by publishing the results “city-wise and centre-wise” without revealing individual details. This directive comes amid a series of hearings concerning alleged irregularities in the examination process.
The apex court, presided over by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud along with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, is currently addressing multiple petitions that claim malpractices during the NEET-UG 2024 held on May 5. The controversy has heightened with accusations that the exam paper was leaked and solved within a mere 45 minutes, which the NTA referred to as a “hypothesis” during the proceedings.
Key points from Thursday’s hearing included allegations from the petitioners’ lawyer that the exam syllabus was unjustly expanded a few months prior to the test and that there were security lapses in the transportation of the question papers in Hazaribag. The Chief Justice emphasized the need for substantial proof that the alleged leak was pervasive enough to compromise the entire examination process before considering the drastic measure of cancelling the exam.
In response to the court’s concerns, the government submitted an affidavit on July 10 stating that the Ministry of Education had enlisted IIT Madras to perform an in-depth analysis of the NEET-UG 2024 results. The findings presented to the court indicated no substantial evidence of widespread cheating or any particular group of candidates gaining anomalously high scores.
The NEET-UG 2024 attracted over 23.33 million candidates who appeared across 4,750 centres in 571 cities globally, making it a critical gateway for students aspiring to enter medical fields such as MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, among others, in both government and private institutions across India.
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The Supreme Court is scheduled to continue hearing the related pleas on July 22, where further developments are expected to unfold regarding the integrity and future implications of the NEET-UG examination process.
