SC directs NTA to publish results of students of NEET-UG by Sat noon [Read Order]

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court  on Thursday told the National Testing Agency to publish the marks of all the candidates in the NEET-UG 24 exam by Saturday on its website, while ensuring that their students is masked, following the allegations of paper leak, and other irregularities in the test for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges of the country.

A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra also directed the NTA that the results should be declared separately city and centre- wise.

The court's order after hearing a batch of pleas for conducting re-test of the NEET-UG, held on May 5.

"We direct the NTA to publish the marks obtained by students in the NEET-UG 24 exam while ensuring that the identity of the students is masked," the bench said in its order on Thursday.

"The fact that there is a leak at Patna and Hazaribag is admitted..the question papers had been disseminated. We want to ensure whether this was confined to those centres or widespread. Students are at a handicap because they don't know results. We want the students identity to be masked but let us see centre wise what was the mark pattern," the bench said.

The court also refused a plea by senior advocate Narinder Hooda, appearing for one of the petitioners, to stay the counselling of the exam.

"No, not right now. We will hear it on Monday, July 22 the case, as the counselling is on July 24 or third week and it might go on for more than a month or more," the bench said.

During the hearing the bench noted the investigation at present is going on. "If what the CBI has told us is revealed, it will affect the investigation. People will become wise," the bench said.

The bench also asked the counsel, "You have to show us that the leak was so systemic that it affected the entire examination so as to warrant the cancellation of the entire exam."

"If we accept your wider submission, we would like your assistance on which are the lines on which the investigation must happen," the bench asked the counsel.

The counsel said the NTA had not declared the entire results.

"While UPSC declares the result of the entire people. At least NTA should have declared the results of the one lakh people who would get admission," he submitted.

The bench, for its part, emphasised re-examination has to be on a concrete footing that the entire exam was affected.

The counsel also contended the IIT Madras' analytics based on 23 lakh students performance was not reliable and that it should have been done on the basis of one lakh eight thousand candidates who would get admissions.

He so said the IIT Madras report can't be relied upon as there is a conflict of interest since IIT Madras Director is member of the governing body of NTA.

"That is factually wrong. Somebody else was. Subject to further verification, whichever IIT is organising the JEE, that Chairman of that IIT is ex-officio member of NTA. But the Director who prepared this report is not a member," Solicitor General Tushar Mehta interjected at this stage.

NTA, in its reply filed before the top court denied the allegations that there was a systemic failure in conducting the exam, and there were widespread irregularities.

"The allegations of the petitioners that there has been a systemic failure as candidates have obtained unprecedented higher marks only in the top range of mark interval are misconceived,” the NTA said.

The agency also said that the exam centre allotment was only two days before the exam. So nobody knew which centre is going to be allotted to which student.

The counsel said that the NTA and government are attributing two reasons for the exponential inflation in marks - one, there was reduction of syllabus; two, increase in candidature. "Inflation of marks is admitted, leak is admitted," Hooda said.

Going through the report of the NTA, the bench said that the top hundred ranks were from many states, seven ranks each from AP, Bihar, Gujarat, four from Haryana, three from Delhi, six from Karnataka, five from Kerala, Maharashtra, TN and WB and six from UP. So it appeared that the spread in the top hundred marks is distributed across the country, in 12 states and one UT.

Mehta said that the first 100 rankers are spread across 95 centres located in 56 cities within 18 States/UTs.

[Read Order]