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The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against the demand to reconduct the NEET-UG exam, saying there wasn't sufficient evidence to indicate a systemic leak of the question paper. The court also emphasised that directing a fresh NEET-UG would have serious consequences on the 24 lakh students who appeared for the exam.
A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, was hearing a batch of petitions demanding retest of the NEET-UG exam conducted on May 5 this year on grounds of question paper-leak and other malpractices.
Delivering the judgment, Chief Justice Chandrachud said the court had scrutinised the data presented by the National Testing Agency and a report by IIT Madras, which highlighted that there was no paper leak on a mass scale.
"At this stage, there is absence of material on record to lead to conclusion that result of the exam is vitiated or that there is a systemic breach of the sanctity of the exam," the Chief Justice said.
The Chief Justice said the court was mindful of the fact that conducting a retest would have "serious consequences" for students who appeared for the exam.
According to the court, conducting a retest for the present year may cause disruption of admission schedule, affect the course of medical education, impact availability of qualified medical professionals in the future and could be disadvantageous for the marginalised students for whom reservation was made in allocation of seats.
The court also stated that there was no dispute over the fact that there was a leak in question paper at Hazaribagh and Patna. The bench further cited the CBI's report on the paper leak, noting that 155 students at these centres were direct beneficiaries of the said paper leak.
"Since the probe by the CBI has not attained finality, this court had in a previous order required the Union to indicate whether certain trends regarding abnormality or otherwise could be drawn from results from 4,750 centres in 571 cities. The government has produced the analysis by IIT Madras indicating its position on the basis of data analytics," the Chief Justice said.
The court clarified if the CBI investigation reveals the involvement of an increased number of beneficiaries of the paper leak, action would be taken against them.
On the issue of two correct options of a question in the NEET paper, the Chief Justice cited the IIT Delhi report which concluded option 4 was correct. The Chief Justice also directed the NTA revise the result on the basis of the corrected option.
He also clarified that if the petitioners have any grievance against this judgment, they can pursue their rights and remedies in accordance with law.
