Examining the Integrity of NEET: A Crisis of Trust
Amid protests and echoes of a NEET re-test by students and organisations, alleging irregularities in the marking system used by NTA we have come across historical proceedings of the Supreme Court.
On July 8, the Supreme Court during its hearing stated that it was “ clear that leak of NEET UG question paper has taken place. We want to know the number of beneficiaries of question paper leak, and what action has been taken against them.” The bench of three judges (DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra ) accepted that the NEET paper was leaked through telegram, WhatsApp and other electronic means. It stated that when such papers got leaked it spread like a ‘wildfire’.
Enquiry
They mentioned that the Court is aware of the fact that they are dealing with the lives of 23 lakh students. If the beneficiaries of the paper leaks are not found or arrested then the court has to order the reconduction of the examination. It has presented several questions to CBI and NTA and ordered them to file their affidavits by 5 pm July 10 and share these with petitioners as well. Court also wanted to know how many of them were among those students who were beneficiaries of grace marks provided by NTA. It asked NTA regarding the steps taken to identify those beneficiaries, and the time duration between the leak of exams and occurrence on 5 May.
However, NTA was not in Favour of conducting of the entire exam again. It apprehended that it can “seriously jeopardise” lakhs of honest candidates without proof of large-scale breach of confidentiality.
“It is also submitted that at the same time, in the absence of any proof of any large-scale breach of confidentiality in a pan-India examination, it would not be rational to scrap the entire examination and the results already declared,” the Centre said. “Scrapping the exam in its entirety would seriously jeopardise the lakhs of honest candidates who attempted the question paper in 2024,” the Education Ministry said.
Thus in a nutshell we can say that the center is in search of proof for mass malpractice with the questions of the examination system on 5th May. The next hearing is on 11th July when we can expect to observe the final decision.
References
Indian express , The Hindu