Supreme Court orders no re-test in NEET UG 2024

New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday said no to re-test for NEET UG 2024 after hearing arguments for over 4 days.

Pronouncing the order, a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice JB Pardiwala said that at this stage the court has independently scrutinised the data placed on record by NTA.

At the present stage, there is an absence of material on record to lead to a conclusion that the result of the exam is vitiated or that there is a systemic breach.

Data on record is not indicative of a systemic leak of the question paper which would indicate a disruption of the sanctity of the exam.

Tained students can be differentiated from the untainted students. 

If the probe reveals increased number of beneficiaries then action shall be taken against any such student at any stage not withstanding the completion of counselling process. 

No student who is revealed to have been in this fraud or a beneficiary would be entitled to claim any vested right in continuance of admission.

CJI began pronouncing the order by saying that that the fact that leak of NEET UG 2024 paper took place at hazaribagh and at patna is not in dispute. 

“Following transfer of investigation to it, CBI has filed its status reports dated July 10,” CJI said. 

“CBI has further filed reports on July 17 and 21. Disclosure shows probe is on and CBI indicates that material shows 155 students drawn from the exam centres at hazaribagh and patna appeared to be the beneficiaries of the fraud. 

“Since the probe by the CBI has not attained finality, this court had in a previous order required the union to indicate whether certain trends regarding abnormality or otherwise could be drawn from results from 4750 centres in 571 cities. 

“The UoI has produced the analysis by IIT Madras indicating position on the basis of data analytics.

"NEET was conducted on May 5 and June 4 results were declared. Petitioner sought that the directions should be issued for convening a retest on the ground (1) the question paper was leaked; (2) there are systemic deficiencies in the modalities conducted for the examination.

"The neet ug exam was conducted at 4750 centres at 571 cities besides 14 cities overseas.

"24 lakh students are competing for 1,08,000 seats. the court has been apprised of the fact that 50th percentile reflects the percentage of cut off. the exam consists of 180 questions totalling to 720 marks and one negative mark for wrong answers.

"Petitioner state that the leak which took place during course of NEET UG exam was systemic in nature and coupled with the structural definciences the only course of action permissible would be to conduct a re-test.

"By an interim order of this court, while flagging the principal issues in contention, this court had called for a disclosure on affidavit by the NTA, Union and by the CBI. Role of CBI comes to play as FIR in Delhi, gujarat, rajasthan, Bihar, jharkhand has been transferred to the CBI.

"Arguments concluded. Judgment has been reserved. In a matter like this final conclusions of the court be recorded at the present stage since there is an urgent need to provide certainty and finality to the dispute which has occured and affects career of over 2 million students," said CJI.

The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is conducted by the NTA for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country.