New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday (July 23) has refused to cancel the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) UG 2024 examination.
The apex court bench comprising of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra have said that there is no material to show systemic breach, Live Law reported.
“At the present stage there is absence of material on record sufficient to lead to the conclusion that the result of the exam was vitiated or there was systemic breach in the sanctity of the exam,” Justice Chandrachud said.
He added: “The data produced on record is not indicative of the systemic leak of the question paper which would lead to the destruction of the sanctity of the exam.”
Notably, the court has officially recognised that instances of paper leaks occurred in both Hazaribag (Jharkhand) and Patna (Bihar). However, the bench underlined that “re-examination will lead to serious consequences affecting over 23 lakh students and will lead to disruption of the academic schedule, causing a cascading effect in the coming years,” as per the Live Law report.
On Monday, the bench had ordered the director of Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) to convene a three-member committee to review a disputed Physics question that led to 44 candidates achieving perfect scores. The apex court bench was informed earlier that the provisional answer key gave the correct answer, but later the NTA changed its stance and decided to give marks for a second option as well.
“We got the report. Expert team is of the opinion that option four is correct. Statement two is incorrect because atoms of radioactive material is not stable. So, the NTA was correct in its answer key that option four was correct,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said earlier during the hearing on Tuesday.
Further, the court has directed the NTA to revise the results of the NEET-UG examination by treating option (four) as the only correct answer to the ‘ambiguous’ question.
With the medical entrance exam’s counselling process set to begin on Wednesday (July 24) today’s ruling is crucial.
