NEET-UG paper leak case: Supreme Court adjourns case to July 18, cites ‘unreceived affidavits from Centre, NTA’

New Delhi: The Supreme Court adjourned the hearing of the petitions on Thursday, July 11, seeking the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2024 exam and has scheduled the matter for the next hearing on July 18.

The Court granted the adjournment to give petitioners time to submit their answers to the affidavits that the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the Center filed on July 10. 

The cases were originally scheduled to be listed by the bench headed by Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, on Monday, July 15. However, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta cited a personal matter. The SG announced that he would not be available on Monday and Tuesday, nor would the Attorney General. The Court then moved the cases to next Thursday because Muharram falls on Wednesday of next week.

The bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra are hearing a series of petitions concerning the controversial NEET-UG 2024 medical entrance exam. 

These include pleas alleging irregularities and malpractices during the May 5 test and seeking a fresh examination. During a previous hearing on July 8, the Supreme Court said that the integrity of NEET-UG 2024 had been compromised.

The bench was scheduled to consider several petitions about the controversial NEET-UG 2024 medical admission examination. These include pleas requesting a new exam and claiming anomalies and malpractices during the May 5 test. The Supreme Court declared that there had been compromises to the integrity of NEET-UG 2024 during a prior hearing on July 8.

In a separate petition filed on Wednesday, the Center said that the Ministry of Education has asked IIT Madras to perform extensive data analytics of the NEET-UG 2024 candidates' results in accordance with the Supreme Court's orders. The Center notified the Supreme Court that there was no proof of widespread cheating or of certain candidate groups illegally profiting from anomalous NEET-UG 2024 ratings.

As per the Center's additional affidavit presented to the SC, IIT Madras carried out data analytics on the NEET-UG 2024 results. Experts discovered no anomalies in the marks distribution, which conformed to a bell-shaped curve characteristic of large-scale tests.

In their affidavit, the National Testing Agency (NTA) claims that the video posted on Telegram on May 4 purporting to display a picture of the NEET UG exam paper was fake. It further stated that the timestamp had been tampered with to provide the impression of an early leak.

On the last hearing date, the bench requested the Union's and NTA's answers regarding the scope of the paper leak and the potential separation of the guilty from the rest of the group during the most recent hearing date. The Court stated that a retest might be required if the integrity of the exam as a whole has been compromised, and it is impossible to distinguish between the applicants who benefited from fraud and the sincere ones. The Court further stated that the retest would be the last option given the impact on around 24 lakh students.

23.33 lakh students appeared for NEET-UG 2024 on May 5 across 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 cities overseas. The NTA-conducted test is the entrance test for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, and other related courses in government and private institutions nationwide.