NEET retest only if entire exam vitiated, SC assures students

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Monday sought a report from CBI on its investigation into the NEET-UG question paper leak by Wednesday and assured over 23 lakh students who took the exam on May 5 that it may order a retest only if the beneficiaries of the leak could not be identified and the integrity of the entrance exam for MBBS courses was found to have been completely vitiated.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra heard a batch of over 50 petitions by candidates, who through lead counsel Narender Hooda have sought cancellation of NEET-UG by citing the paper leak, first detected in Patna, and other irregularities reported from different states, by arguing that the entire examination was vitiated as the questions and answers were available on social media.
The bench said a retest could be ordered only if three conditions were met - one, the alleged paper leak was systemic; two, if the leak compromised the sanctity and integrity of the entire test; and, three, if it was not possible to identify and segregate the beneficiaries of the fraud from the untainted candidates.
The bench, however, emphasised that it would not order a retest "if the breach is confined to specific centres and it is possible to identify and segregate beneficiaries".
67 candidates getting full marks surprises SC
It should not lead to cancellation of NEET-UG given the massive scale on which it is conducted at 4,750 centres in 571 cities across India and 14 cities abroad involving more than 23 lakh students who had studied hard and undertaken cost and efforts and would have to go through a fresh test, the bench said.
Every year, about 23-24 lakh students compete for 1.08 lakh MBBS seats in various medical colleges, including 56,000 govt-run ones.
Posting the matters for further hearing on Thursday, the CJI-led bench said it may order a fresh test if CBI status report fulfils the three parameters and after they have gone through the responses of the National Testing Agency and the Centre on the entire gamut of questions relating to the manner and mechanism of conducting the exam - right from framing of question papers by a group of experts selected by NTA to their safe custody till distribution at the test centres. NTA and the Centre have to submit their responses by 5pm Wednesday.
SC noted with surprise that compared to just seven candidates who secured full 720 marks in the previous four NEET-UG exams, the number soared to 67 this year, and asked solicitor general Tushar Mehta whether it was possible for the cyber forensic unit of the home ministry to use data analytics to scrutinise answer sheets of suspiciously high scoring candidates in order to ascertain the spread of irregularities.
Mehta said govt was ready to disclose all material but insisted that the irregularities and paper leak were localised incidents which did not vitiate the sanctity or integrity of the exam across the country.
The bench said, "We have to be ruthless with those who indulged in paper leak and those who benefited from it." It asked NTA's counsel Naresh Kaushik to inform the court of action taken against those identified as beneficiaries of irregularities.
It asked NTA to inform also about the nature of the paper leak, the places where leak took place, the time gap between the leak and the actual conduct of examination on May 5, the manner and spread of leak and dissemination of the question paper through social media. CBI has to place the findings of its investigation into all these aspects, the SC said while asking NTA to detail the steps taken to identify the beneficiaries of the fraud and the modalities followed to order retest for 1,563 candidates.
Pushing for a glitch-free NEET-UG and similar competitive examinations in future, the bench said to prevent such incidents, it would be necessary to set up a multi-disciplinary committee whose members command public confidence to lay down modalities and processes for conducting such exams on which the future of lakhs of students hinge.
"If such a committee is already set up by the govt, full details of their credentials would be made available so that the court can modify the composition to bring together talents in the field of administration, experts in the domain and data analytics to ensure integrity of examinations," the bench said.