NEET-UG 2024: Supreme Court Rules Out Retest, Adjusts Scores For Answer Discrepancy

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a re-test in this year's NEET-UG exam will not be conducted and said that the ranks would be revised as five marks will be deducted from those candidates' scorecards who were awarded marks for a question that allegedly had two right answers.

Only those candidates who marked the correct answer will retain their marks, the top court said. This decision follows an IIT Delhi report affirming that only one answer was correct.

The top court was also mindful of the fact that directing a fresh NEET-UG test for the present year would be replete with serious consequences for over 2 million students.

This would include disruptions in admissions, the prejudicial impact on the presence of qualified medical professionals in the future and the impact on underprivileged sections. In this view, ordering a cancellation of the entire NEET-UG exam is not warranted, it said.

The top court found no evidence of a systemic breach in the exam’s sanctity. The evidence on record did not indicate a leak of the question paper that would undermine the exam's credibility.

In arriving at this ultimate conclusion, the court said that it has been guided by the well-settled test of whether it is possible to segregate the untainted results from the tainted ones.

In other words, no student who is revealed to have been the beneficiary of the malpractices would be able to claim his right to admissions in the future, the court observed.

Lastly, the court said that the CBI will continue its probe in the case, but counselling and other ancillary admission processes will continue.

After the NEET-UG 2024 results were declared on June 4, widespread allegations of irregularities and demands for a re-examination echoed across the country. Over 24 lakh candidates across 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 overseas venues, took the examination.

When the NTA unveiled the results, a staggering 67 students had secured the top rank, including six from the same examination centre in Haryana. This immediately led to allegations of the inflation of marks.

Additionally, the NTA awarded grace marks to 1,563 students due to their lack of sufficient time to complete the test and a question that allegedly had two correct answers. The NTA came under scrutiny for this process of awarding grace marks, which followed a normalisation formula, as it did not proactively notify students of their grace marks at the time of award; instead, it acted in response to their protests.

On June 8, Subodh Kumar Singh, the director general of the NTA, said that the agency had decided to form a four-person, high-powered committee to revisit the grievances faced by 1,600 candidates across six centres and allay fears in the minds of 23 lakh students. However, he claimed that the integrity of the exam was not compromised.

Since then, grace marks awarded to these students have been cancelled and they have already been afforded the opportunity to either appear for a retest or accept their scorecards after the deletion of these grace marks.

During previous hearings, the apex court has said that it is an undeniable fact that the leak took place. However, the court observed that ordering a retest in an exam of this magnitude should be an option of last resort.