NEET row: Avoid flip-flops in national exam, Supreme Court tells NTA

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Centre and the National Testing Agency to take up slew of measures in holding the NEET-UG exam to ensure an unbiased, impartial and robust system to make a fool proof and a transparent exam system.

A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, however, found no systemic breach to cancel the exam.

In its detailed judgment of July 23 order when it declined to order re-test of NEET UG, 2024 on account of paper leakage and other irregularities, the bench told the NTA to avoid the flip-flops in a national exam since such an act does not serve the interests of the students.

"The manner in which NTA has organised the exam this year gives rise to serious concerns," it said.

The bench said the court is cognisant of the fact that national-level exams with participation from tens of lakhs of students require immense resources, coordination, and planning. "But that is precisely the reason for the existence of a body such as NTA. It is no excuse to say that the exam is conducted in myriad centres or that a large

number of aspirants appear for the exam," the bench said.

The court directed for making a standard operating procedure to ensure rigorous checks from making question papers to storage etc. It also ordered for enhancing identity checks at various stages, technological innovations to prevent impersonation in terms of the privacy law.

The bench also widened the scope and ambit of the K Radhakrishnan expert committee constituted by the Union government to look into the NEET-UG paper leak and other irregularities, by saying the committee should encompass the seven steps to have a robust exam process.

Several steps suggested by the court are putting in place mechanism for evaluation committee, Standard Operating Procedure, review the process of alloting exam centre, processes for enhanced identity checks, CCTV monitoring of exam centres, secure logistic providers for ensuring non-tempering of papers and recommending a robust grievance redressal mechanism.

The court also directed for considering viability of using closed vehicles with real time locks rather than open e rickshaws for delivering question papers.

"The aim of the entire process or conducting these exercise was to deter and detect any malpractice in the exam," the court said.

The bench also said that the expert committee must rectify the deficiencies in the exam system.

If any student has any kind of personal grievance not related to the issues resolved in the judgement, they would be free to move to the respective High Courts, the bench said.

The bench again emphasised that it had come to the conclusion that there was no systemic breach of the papers, the leak was only limited to Patna and Hazaribagh.

On July 23, the Supreme Court had rejected a plea to order a re-test for NEET UG, 2024, finding that the materials available on record do not indicate that the sanctity of the entire examination was affected due to incidents of paper leakage.

The court had said that the data on record is not indicative of a systemic leak of the question paper of the examination held on May 5 for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges across the country.