‘Whom to trust, NTA or police?’: Dharmendra Pradhan's NEET paper leak denial irks opposition, advocates

NEW DELHI: ‘Whom to trust, NTA or Bihar police?’ is the question of many after the union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan denied a paper leak in the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) 2024 despite Bihar police’s report in which it has allegedly gathered confessions of the culprits who leaked the paper in advance. The Supreme Court today cancelled the NEET results 2024 of 1,563 candidates who got grace marks. The National Testing Agency (NTA) will be conducting a re-exam for these students on June 23.

After Pradhan assumed charge as the education minister, he was confronted with queries on NEET paper leak to which he replied that there is no evidence of paper leak and rubbished the reports. The minister said that court orders will be followed and a retest will be conducted for over 1,500 NEET candidates.

Even NTA has denied irregularities and paper leak in NEET. 63 cases of students using unfair means in NEET UG were reported out of whom 23 have been debarred and NEET 2024 result of the remaining 40 candidates have been withheld, but there has been no paper leak, NTA officials said recently.

On the other hand, the opposition and academics are referring to Bihar Police report where the alleged culprits have taken the names of candidates who have benefitted from paper leak in exchange of money. Rajya Sabha MP (Member of Parliament) Priyanka Chaturvedi shared on social media the confession of a culprit in the paper leak and asked when the accused confessed of leaking the paper a day in advance and Bihar police claims that NTA was made aware of this leak, why the testing agency went ahead and released the NEET results.

NEET paper leak, grace marks, controversy

Attacking the education minister, the MP said in a post, “Besides the arbitrary granting of grace marks which have been withdrawn , the NTA has a lot to answer. What is shameful is that the Education Minister finds it absolutely okay to defend NTA and rubbish the paper leak, however investigation shows otherwise. The minister is basically dismissing the Bihar Police investigation, is Bihar CM Nitish Kumar okay with this?”

Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi commented that the party demands an investigation monitored by the Supreme Court. He asked how Dharmendra Pradhan is defending NTA when there is evidence of paper leak.

“Having taken oath only two days ago, the education minister has rushed to give a clean chit to the NTA. On the basis of what enquiry? What investigation has he done which has led him to the conclusion that NTA is guilt-free? We have so much evidence of coaching centres, examination centres asking lakhs of money from poor middle-class families. Do they not understand the torture that students go through when they have to sit for these exams year after year wasting their precious youth on this exam which this government has failed to conduct in a free and unbiased manner,” he asked while talking to reporters.

On the Supreme Court's hearing, Alakh Pandey, CEO of Physics Wallah who also filed a petition said that NTA accepted in front of the top court that the grace marks given to the students were wrong and they agree that this created dissatisfaction among the students. The question is if NTA has made other discrepancies in the exam that we are unaware of. So, there is a trust issue with NTA, he said.