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India's Supreme Court asks NTA to publish NEET-UG result of all students, mask their identity

Apex court bench to continue hearing of pleas on July 22

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to publish on its website the marks obtained by all the students who appeared in Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test undergraduate exam (NEET-UG) 2024 and said the identity of students should be masked.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra ordered that result should be published separately, city and centre-wise by Saturday 12 noon.

The apex court passed the direction to the NTA to publish the results, after the petitioners-students urged it to direct the testing agency to publish the result of all students to bring in some transparency.

The top court in its order stated, "The petitioners have submitted that it would be appropriate if the results of the NEET-UG 24 exam is published on the website so as to bring about some transparency on the centre-wise marks obtained by candidates. We direct the NTA to publish the marks obtained by students in the NEET-UG 2024 exam while at the same time ensuring that the identity of the students is masked. The results should be declared in relation to each centre and city separately".

The bench said it will continue the hearing of pleas alleging paper leak and malpractice in NEET-UG 2024 exams, on July 22.

The top court held a day-long hearing in the NEET-UG matter.

The apex court was hearing a batch of pleas seeking direction to recall NEET-UG 2024 results and to conduct the examination afresh, alleging paper leakage and malpractices in the test held.

Aspirants had approached the top court and raised the issue of leakage of question paper, awarding compensatory marks and anomaly in question of NEET-UG.

NEET-UG examination, conducted by NTA, is the pathway for admissions into MBBS, BDS and AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country.

The NEET-UG, 2024 was held across 4,750 centres on May 5 and around 24 lakh candidates appeared for it. During the hearing, apex court posed several questions to NTA regarding alleged paper leak and malpractices in NEET exam.

It asked NTA about how many students out of 23.33 lakhs who appeared for the exam changed their centre.

NTA said that in the name of corrections, students change centres and 15,000 students utilised the window for corrections.

NTA said that students can change only the city and no candidate can choose the centre. Centre is allotted by the system and centre's allotment is only two days before the exam, so nobody knows which centre is going to be allotted, it added.

Petitioners-candidates counsel argued that question papers were dispatched to the centres on April 24 through a private courier company and reached the SBI and Canara bank on May 3.

To this, CJI said that the papers were dispatched on April 24 and received on May 3, which makes the time gap about nine days.

The top court was informed that question papers were sent to SBI and Canara bank branches in 571 cities and there were 4,750 centres.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that CBI has investigated the entire chain of event from the printers to the centres.

"The CBI has investigated the entire chain of event from the printers to the centres... how there was sealing, GPS tracking..., there are digital lockers... There is a seven-layer safety system. There are two printing presses because there are two papers," he said.

Petitioners' counsel told the bench that a trunk was found to be travelling on an open e-rickshaw to Oasis school and Hazaribagh school principal received this trunk and has now been arrested by the CBI. The sealed trunk was delivered to him and not to any bank.

He further said, "There is a systemic failure by NTA in conducting the exam by NTA, it's failure is multi-dimensional. The transportation of question papers got compromised when for six days the papers were in the hands of a private courier company and the papers were being transported in an e-rickshaw in Hazaribagh. Instead of taking it to the bank, the driver took it to the Oasis school."

The dissemination of the leaked papers was doing rounds from May 3 itself, he said, adding that evidence of Telegram videos show that the solved papers were being circulated on May 4.

"Given the nature of social media, it is impossible to accurately determine the exact spread of the leaked papers and the beneficiaries," argued the counsel.

To this, CJI Chandrachud asked, why would people making money out of leaked papers circulate them mass-scale?

"The idea of somebody doing this is not to make a national charade of NEET exam. People were doing it for money. So, it was not to bring disrepute to the exam and somebody was doing it to make money, which is evident now. Mass leakage of paper also requires contacts at that level so that you connect to all such key contacts in different cities. Anybody who is making money out of it won't circulate it mass scale," said the bench.

CJI asked NTA and Centre that, according to them "students got papers at 10.15 am. There are 180 questions. Is it possible that between 9.30 am and 10.15 am that there are problem solvers and they are given to students in 45 minutes?"

Solicitor General replied that there were seven paper solvers and they demarcated 25 questions each.

"Whole hypothesis that within 45 minutes there was a breach and entire paper was solved and given to students seems very farfetched," said CJI.

Solicitor General said that there (accused) modus operandi was that "they give the papers to the ones who gave postdated cheques. They did not want mass leak at all. Otherwise, their efforts are wasted. this gang member in Hazaribagh sent the paper to another gang member in Patna through WhatsApp."

In Godhra incident, the bench said that it cannot say it was a part of widespread malpractice, there is no evidence that the cheating took place.

"It appears that wrongdoing has only happened in Hazaribagh and Patna... then after this we are only left with statistics that 61 students got 720/720... Can we cancel the entire examination on that sole basis?" it asked petitioners' counsel.