Today, on June 11, the Supreme Court of India issued notice to the National Testing Agency (NTA) in connection to a petition seeking to cancel the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test - Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 over allegations of paper leak, saying that ‘“sanctity of the examination has been affected”.
At the same time, the court refused to stay the NEET-UG 2024 counselling process.
However, aspirants and experts who have been pushing for a re-examination for over a week now, have hopes for a positive outcome from the Supreme Court hearing, which has now been scheduled for July 8, along with an earlier petition, on which, notice was issued by a bench led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on May 17.
Sonal Choudhary, a NEET aspirant from Bihar, expressed, “Despite counselling not being stayed, notices have been sent to the NTA as well as Patna Police. We are positive that the instances of paper leak will come out and be confirmed in the Supreme Court.”
This year, several allegations of malpractices, irregularities including paper leaks came forward after the NEET-UG exam was conducted on May 5. In Bihar, the police even made 13 arrests in connection to the paper leak case.
“NTA has refused all allegations of paper leak every time they were asked. My only question is, where is their proof? If the students say that there has been a paper leak, we have our proof — media reports, FIRs, but how does the NTA justify their stand?” said Sonal.
Since the results of NEET-UG 2024 came out on June 4, more petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court, Delhi High Court and even Calcutta High Court, over discrepancies in scores and inflation in cut-offs leading to 67 students scoring full marks in the exam.
Experts and educators have also assured the aspirants to keep their fingers crossed for a positive verdict from the apex court in the future.
Kapil Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder of NEETPrep coaching institute based in New Delhi, said “This decision might make students wonder if they will see light at the end of the day. But just because counselling is still to proceed as scheduled, it does not mean that the Supreme Court cannot rule for re-examination. The Supreme Court usually takes its own time and it might be frustrating for the petitioners and students, but this does not mean that the verdict would be affected in any way.”
Vivek Pandey, an health activist who helped the students file a petition in the Supreme Court against the paper leak allegations, told EdexLive, “We are happy that the Supreme Court recognised the issue, they called out NTA, and said that the ‘sanctity of the exam has been affected’ this year. We see this as a positive step. Our petition has now been clubbed with another petition and the hearing is scheduled to take place on July 8.”
2024-06-11T13:08:47Z dg43tfdfdgfd