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The Centre on Wednesday filed its affidavit before the Supreme Court in the NEET-UG case, denying any mass malpractice in the medical entrance exam conducted on May 5.
During a hearing on Monday, July 8, the Supreme Court asked the Centre and National Testing Agency (NTA) to file their responses on the extent of the paper leak and possible segregation of the wrongdoers from others.
In its affidavit, the government attached an IIT Madras report after data analytics on NEET-UG exam, which states "neither any indication of mass malpractice nor a localised set of candidates being benefitted leading to abnormal scores".
"The marks distribution follows the bell-shaped curve that is witnessed in any large-scale examination indicating no abnormality," the affidavit reads.
The Supreme Court is hearing a batch of petitions regarding alleged irregularities in the medical entrance examination. The pleas include those seeking cancellation of the examination and conducting it afresh, alleging irregularities and malpractices in the May 5 test.
During a hearing on Monday, Chief Justice DY Chandrachud remarked that the leak of the question paper was an "admitted fact" and before making a decision to hold a re-examination, "we must be conscious of the extent of the leak as we are dealing with 23 lakh students".
"The Union of India is taking all-round efforts to device solution-oriented mechanism while ensuring that on one hand no candidate guilty of malpractice gets any benefit and on the other hand, ensuring that 23 lakh students are not required to be burdened with a fresh test merely based upon unsupported apprehensions," the affidavit reads.
The allegations of irregularities in the NEET-UG exam, including paper leaks and discrepancies in granting grace marks, have sparked protests and political outcry by the opposition across India. An unprecedented 67 students initially scored a perfect 720, with suspicions of irregularities arising from six top scorers being from a single centre in Haryana.
Regarding the increase in marks obtained by students, the Centre attributed it to the reduction in syllabus.
"There is an overall increase in the marks obtained by students, specifically in the range of 550 to 720. This increase is seen across the cities and centres. This is attributed to 25 per cent reduction in syllabus. In addition, candidates obtaining such high marks are spread across multiple cities and multiple centers, indicating very less likelihood of malpractice," the Centre's affidavit reads.
CENTRE ON COUNSELLING REPORTS
In its affidavit, the Centre also said that counselling will be conducted in four rounds starting from the third week of July.
"If a candidate is found beneficiary of any malpractice, his/her candidature would be cancelled at any stage during the counselling process or even afterwards," the affidavit reads.
"If an exercise is to be conducted by NTA and by the Union government so as to identify any further beneficiaries of the question paper leakage, a considered decision at the policy level would have to be taken by the government on the status of the counselling," it further read.
