NEET-UG Paper Leak Case: The Supreme Court on Monday heard more than 30 petitions related to the controversial medical entrance exam NEET-UG 2024. During this, the court said that if the sanctity of the medical entrance exam NEET-UG 2024 has been ‘destroyed’ and if its leaked question paper has been circulated through social media, then a re-examination will have to be ordered. The bench said that if the question paper is being leaked through electronic means, then it will ‘spread like wildfire’. One thing is clear that the question paper has been leaked.
1- The bench asked the NTA, ‘Assuming that the government will not cancel the exam, what will it do to identify the beneficiaries of the question paper leak?’ The court said that if the leak has been circulated through social media, then a re-examination will have to be ordered. We should not deny what happened.
2- The apex court said it wanted to know how many people benefitted from the question paper leak and what action the Centre had taken against them. “Results of how many wrongdoers have been withheld and we want to know the geographical distribution of such beneficiaries,” the bench asked.
3- A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Mishra said, ‘There is no doubt that the question paper has been leaked. We are finding out the extent of the leak. There are also some ‘warning signs’ in this, as 67 candidates have scored 720 out of 720 marks, whereas in previous years this ratio was very low.
4- While hearing the NEET case, the Supreme Court asked the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) to take action against the wrong beneficiaries in the examination held on May 5. The court also said that denying the allegations of paper leak will further aggravate the problem.
5- To consider conducting a complete re-examination, a bench headed by CJI DY Chandrachud asked the NTA to give full details to the Supreme Court about the nature of the paper leak, the places where it was leaked and the time between the leak and the conduct of the examination.
6- The bench has also asked the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) to submit a status report regarding the status of the investigation and the material collected during the investigation.
7- In its order, the court said, “The material collected during the investigation should have been produced by the investigating officer when the leak was alleged and when the leaked question paper was made available.”
8- Apart from this, the Supreme Court said that if possible, technology and law should be used to identify the beneficiaries of the scam, so that 23 lakh students do not have to take the exam again. The next hearing of the case will be on July 11.
9- In the preliminary affidavit presented before the Supreme Court last week, the Center had opposed the cancellation of the NEET-UG exam, saying that cancelling the entire exam would harm lakhs of honest students.
10- The affidavit filed by the Union education ministry said, “In the absence of any evidence of large-scale breach of confidentiality in the all-India examination, it would not be reasonable to cancel the entire examination and the results already declared.
