NEW DELHI (TIP): The Supreme Court on Friday, June 14, issued notices to the Centre and National Testing Agency (NTA) on petitions seeking a CBI probe into alleged paper leak and irregularities in NEET-UG 2024, in which 67 students got a perfect score of 720 out of 720.

Asking the Centre and NTA to respond to the petitions seeking a CBI probe into alleged paper leak and malpractices in NEET-UG, a Vacation Bench led by Justice Vikram Nath asked them to respond in two weeks and posted the matter for further hearing on July 8 when certain other petitions on the issue would also be taken up.

As the petitioners’ advocates said it’s a question of lakhs of students and that candidates were committing suicides, the Bench asked them not to make any emotional arguments. It said no ex-parte order could be passed on their plea for a CBI probe without hearing the counsel for the Centre and NTA.

Besides a CBI probe into alleged paper leak and other irregularities, the petitioners have also sought cancellation of NEET-UG – results of which were declared on June 4.

The Bench – which also included Justice Sandeep Mehta – also issued notices to various parties on NTA’s petition seeking transfer of cases pending in various high courts on the NEET-UG row to the top court to avoid multiplicity of litigation.

Now both sets of petitions will be taken up for hearing on July 8.

The Bench allowed NTA to withdraw three other petitions seeking transfer of cases from high courts to the top court on the issue of grant of grace marks to 1,563 candidates on account of loss of time during the May 5 NEET-UG.

Amid allegations of paper leak and other malpractices in NEET-UG, the Centre on Thursday scrapped the grace marks given on account of loss of time to 1,563 NEET-UG candidates for admission to MBBS, BDS and other courses.

These candidates will be given an option to take a retest on June 23 and the results would be declared by June 30, 2024 so that counselling likely to start from July 6, 2024 onwards was not affected, the Centre had said.

The decision was taken in meetings held by the NTA grievance redressal committee on June 10, 11 and 12 to allay fears of candidates about any possible irregularities.

However, the top court had to stay the counselling process for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in more than 700 government and private institutions across India even as it noted that sanctity of the examination had been affected and that it needed answers from NTA.

Around 22 lakh students appeared for NEET-UG conducted on May 5 by NTA across 4,750 centers in 511 cities and 14 centers abroad for admission to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in more than 700 government and private institutions.

As many as 67 students got a perfect score of 720 out of 720 and some of the Rank 1 holders had the same sequence of roll numbers which raised suspicion of malpractice and irregularities. The majority of them were from the same examination centers in Rajasthan (11), Tamil Nadu (8), Maharashtra (7), Haryana (6) and four each from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. In 2019 and 2020, there was one topper each while there were three toppers in 2021, one in 2022, and two in 2023.

A large number of students protested in Delhi on June 10 demanding a probe into alleged irregularities in NEET-UG. They alleged that grace marks contributed to 67 students sharing the top rank.
(Source: TNS)