NEET-UG 2024: Reveals That the Paper Leak Happened Long Before the Exam Date

In the recent hearing, the Supreme Court directed the publication of NEET-UG 2024 results on a city-wise and centre-wise basis, ensuring that the candidates’ identities were masked. The Supreme Court is currently addressing several petitions that allege irregularities and malpractices, including paper leaks, in the administration of this year’s medical entrance exam.

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The National Testing Agency (NTA), responsible for conducting the NEET-UG exam annually. Followed the Supreme Court’s directive and announced the city-wise and centre-wise results on July 20. The three-judge bench, led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, instructed the NTA to mask the identities of the students in the released results. In response to the publication of these results, the petitioners filed an Intervention Application (IA) in the apex court.

This application requested a retest for the top 3.5 lakh scorers of the exam. The petitioners argued that out of the 24 lakh candidates who appeared for the examination, 13 lakh qualified. Given that the total number of available medical seats is around 1,08,915, the petitioners suggested. That the retest only needs to be conducted for two to three times the number of available seats. They argued that this approach would reasonably limit the cost in terms of time, money, and manpower.

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Allegations of Cheating and Examination Integrity Concerns

Further concerns arose when the NTA made the NEET-UG data public, revealing that 22% of the 264 candidates from the Delhi Public School (DPS) centre in Rewari, Haryana, scored over 600 marks. This raised suspicions and allegations of cheating during the exam. The court previously acknowledged that paper leaks had occurred in Patna and Hazaribagh in Bihar, with both cases currently under investigation by the CBI. Despite these issues, the Centre and the NTA have argued that canceling the entire exam would be “counterproductive” and would “seriously jeopardize” the future of the many honest candidates who took the exam in good faith, especially without concrete evidence of a large-scale breach of confidentiality.

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