NEET 2024: No mass malpractice; IIT Madras report attributes increase in marks to syllabus cut

NEW DELHI: The Union government submitted a fresh affidavit in the Supreme Court refuting the claims of any malpractice in the NEET exam. Opposing the demands for NEET retest, the Centre said that a detailed report received from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) shows that there is “neither any indication of mass malpractice nor a localized set of candidates being benefitted leading to abnormal scores”.

As per the Supreme Court order dated July 8, the ministry of education made a request to IIT Madras director to undertake a comprehensive data analytics of NEET results of the entire set of candidates. The institute carried out an analysis for the top 1.4 lakh rank holders in NEET.

The report was drafted using the parameters like marks distribution, city-wise and centre-wise rank distribution and candidates spread over marks-range. The conclusions were drawn by IIT Madras by analysing the data with the help of Python for data processing, PostgreSQL for data storage and Metabase for analysis after requiring several data and facts from the NTA.

NEET results 2024 analysis

Based on the detailed analysis submitted by IIT Madras, the conclusions on the conduct of NEET exam is given below.

No abnormality - The mark distribution graph shows a bell-shaped curve that is witnessed in any large-scale examination indicating no abnormality in the test.

NEET UG Result 2024: The marks obtained vs the number of candidates

City-wise analysis - The institute analysed city-wise results of 2 years to find irregularities. “This Analysis is granular enough to indicate any abnormality, had a large number of students gotten into high ranks (top 5%), due to malpractice or if students from a particular exam-centre or city were benefitted,” the report said.

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Bengaluru city leads with 5 NEET toppers compared to one candidate bagging a rank in top 100 in 2023. Notably, Patna, wherein it was alleged that the question paper has leaked, has only 2 people in the top 100, with an increase of only 1 candidate compared to 2023. Similar trends were seen if we consider the top 500, 1,000, 5,000 and 60,000 ranks.

Increase in NEET marks - “There is an overall increase in the marks obtained by students, specifically in the range of 550 to 720. This increase is seen across the cities and centres. This is attributed to 25% reduction in syllabus. In addition, candidates obtaining such 940 high marks are spread across multiple cities and multiple centers, indicating very less likelihood of malpractice,” IIT-M said.

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No localized malpractice

In the top 1,000 ranks, Sikar in Rajasthan has the highest number of 55 candidates, followed by Kota with 35 candidates and Kottayam with 25 candidates. This was attributed to the number of coaching centres in these cities. The Centre highlighted that there is no significant spike in toppers in any one centre and Patna, where CBI is investigating NEET paper leak, shows a negative trend in toppers compared to the previous year.

As per the centre-wise data, the maximum number of candidates grabbing a rank in top 100 is 2 in both cases. “If there was a localized malpractice then this number should have been much larger,” it said.