155 candidates benefitted from NEET paper leak: Centre tells Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Around 155 candidates benefited from the NEET paper leak, the solicitor general of India told the Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud during the ongoing Supreme Court hearing on NEET UG 2024 today, as per a Live Law report.

The top court was discussing the details of how the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) 2024 paper was shared with candidates a day before the exam at some centres. Upon SG’s response, the CJI interrogated if the paper leak was widespread which the National Testing Agency (NTA) denied and informed him that the paper was shared at two locations in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh and one location in Bihar’s Patna.

“What we found is that there are 2 locations in Hazaribagh where this was shared after solving and one location in Patna. Within Patna, the solver gang formed a subgroup of six female candidates on May 4 itself as they didn't want to keep the boys and girls under the same roof, so they kept the six girls in the house of an accused,” the NTA was quoted as responding.

During the hearing, the petitioners’ counsel, centre, and NTA’s representative argued over the paper leak and the correct answer to the physics question which led to 44 students getting grace marks in NEET 2024 held on May 5 and emerging among the NEET UG toppers 2024.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi expert committee submitted that option four, given by NTA, is the correct answer for question number 19 in the physics paper. The apex court had on July 22 asked the IIT Delhi director to form a panel and provide their opinion on the correct answer of the controversial question.

NTA recently announced the city and centre-wise NEET results 2024 following the direction of the CJI in the last hearing. According to the analysis of the NEET UG 2024 result data , it was found that 259 candidates from a centre in Rajkot scored above 600 out of 720 in the exam while more than 2,000 aspirants in Sikar got 650 plus scores.