NEET UG 2024: Supreme Court to hear over 40 pleas on cancellation of exam, against NTA

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will hear a batch of pleas seeking cancellation of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test–Undergraduate (NEET-UG 2024) exam today. To avoid multiplicity of litigations, the bench on Monday had asked to transfer cases pending against the NTA in various high courts on the NEET-UG row to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, a special court in Patna on Wednesday sent the key accused in the NEET-UG paper-leak case to CBI custody for 14 days.

The top court will hear more than 40 petitions on NEET cancellation and against the NTA today. The NEET UG SC judgment will impact more than 23 lakh medical aspirants seeking MBBS, BDS admission in India. While, the rumours on NEET paper leak began spreading on social media days before the exam date, the NTA rubbished the claims and said that the exam will be held as per the schedule. Later on, when an unprecedented number of students got top marks in NEET results 2024, suspicion on NEET paper leak grew.

Although the NTA issued clarification on grace marks and toppers, a large section of students demanded re-exam. The top court also said that a retest will have to be conducted if the paper was leaked on social media. Following this, the ministry of education urged the IIT Madras director to conduct a detailed report on the irregularities in the NEET results and opposed reNEET.

The detailed analysis by IIT-M showed that there was no mass or localised malpractice in the NEET UG exam 2024. “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,” it said.

Yesterday, the CBI arrested Pankaj Kumar alias Aditya, a 2017-batch civil engineer from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Jamshedpur, for allegedly stealing the NEET-UG paper from the NTA's trunk in Hazaribagh.

Meanwhile, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has opened the portal for all medical colleges to submit details on the MBBS seats available for NEET UG counselling 2024. The Centre had also announced that the the MCC NEET counselling 2024 will begin from the third week of July.