NTA must publish marks of all NEET-UG candidates, directs SC
The National Testing Agency (NTA), by the noon (12 pm) of Saturday, July 20, must publish on its website the marks of all the students who appeared for the NEET-UG 2024 examination for admission to MBBS courses across the country, the Supreme Court of India ordered today (Thursday, July 18).
The order of the bench, comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, said that the candidates should be organised by city and examination centre. Further, to protect their privacy, the identities of the students should be masked.
The court ordered this while hearing a batch of petitions seeking to cancel the NEET-UG 2024 examination due to alleged paper leaks and malpractices. Over 2.3 million students appeared for the examination held on May 5.
The next hearing in the case is on Monday, July 22.
The order for the online publication of the marks came after the petitioners complained that they were at a “handicap” since they could not ascertain the centre-wise marking pattern because neither the CBI status report nor the complete results (by the NTA) had been shared with them.
CJI Chandrachud noted that there had been confirmed paper leaks at centres in Patna and Hazaribagh, and examining the complete results data was necessary to determine if the leak was confined to those centres or had spread.
Meanwhile, reports have recently come out, saying the Union government was considering moving the NEET-UG examination completely online (marking replies on a soft answer-sheet instead of an OMR sheet) in the light of the paper leaks at multiple centres that happened this year. This would be in line with the way the JEE-Mains examination is held.
But an official also said that for this to happen, a large-scale logistical upgrade was needed. For the NEET-UG examination, 4,000 test centres (where 2.3 million students appeared in 2024) would need to be equipped with internet-linked computers (unlike the JEE-Mains, which involved only 570 centres, where 1.4 million students appeared this year).
