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The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday, July 22, petitions related to the controversy-hit medical entrance exam, NEET-UG 2024, which was held on May 5.
On Saturday, the National Testing Agency (NTA) released the city and centre-wise results of the medical entrance exam, which has been rife with allegations of paper leak and exorbitant inflation of marks.
According to the cause list uploaded on the Supreme Court website on July 22, a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra will hear over 40 petitions, including those filed by the NTA seeking transfer of cases pending against it in various high courts on the NEET-UG dispute to the Supreme Court to avoid a backlog of litigation.
Analysis of the data released by the NTA showed that candidates who allegedly benefited from paper leaks and other irregularities did not perform well. However, the number of students who performed well was higher at some centres.
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The massive data of over 32 lakh candidates from 4,750 centres was released not in a cumulative format but in a drop-down menu for each centre. The data was released on the direction of the Supreme Court, which is hearing several petitions over alleged irregularities, as lakhs of candidates await a final verdict on the fate of the exam.
The performance of candidates from the centres under scrutiny – such as Oasis School, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, Hardayal Public School, Jhajjar, Haryana, Jai Jalaram International School, Godhra, Gujarat – was comparatively poor.
On July 11, the apex court had adjourned the hearing on a batch of petitions, including those seeking cancellation of the exam, re-examination and probe into alleged malpractices in the conduct of NEET-UG 2024, till July 18 as responses from the Centre and the NTA are yet to be received by some of the parties.
The bench said it has received a status report from the Central Bureau of Investigation on the progress made in the investigation.
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In an additional affidavit filed in the apex court last week, the Centre said data analysis of the NEET-UG 2024 results conducted by IIT-Madras found that there was no indication of “large-scale malpractice” or any local level candidates obtaining unusually high marks.
While hearing the petitions on July 8, the apex court had said that the sanctity of NEET-UG 2024 has been violated.
The bench said that if the entire process has been affected, a re-examination can be ordered. The bench had sought detailed information from the NTA and the CBI, including the time and manner of the alleged paper leak, besides the number of wrongdoers, to understand the extent of irregularities claimed by the petitioners.
On May 5, over 23.33 lakh students had taken the exam at 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 foreign cities.
The Centre and the NTA, in their first affidavits filed in the apex court, had said cancellation of the exam would be “repugnant” and “seriously endanger” lakhs of honest candidates in the absence of any evidence of large-scale privacy breach.
The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is conducted by the NTA for admission to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country.
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