Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan takes ‘moral responsibility’ for NEET ‘errors’, sets up high-level panel

According to sources, based on preliminary evidence from Bihar Police, the government is of the view that the irregularity that occurred “was limited” to some areas and may not merit a country-wide retest of the exam. “One of the options being considered is to hold a retest for candidates of just the affected test centres,” said a source.

Owning up the “errors”, Pradhan said, “I take moral responsibility for this. The future of the country will have to be secured, quality and transparency will have to be maintained, the hard work of lakhs of poor students will have to be respected.” When probed further if NEET would be cancelled, he said the country should not hold the future of many candidates from rural areas hostage for “some isolated incidents”.

Student bodies protesting against NEET issue in New Delhi on Thursday. (Express photo by Amit Mehra)

Around 24 lakh students appeared for the NEET examination this year.

“According to preliminary information received from Bihar Police, some errors have happened but they are limited to specific regions. I want to assure you, after getting all information and evidence, we will take strict action against the culprits,” he told reporters. The government would not shy away from even taking action against NTA officials irrespective of their position and seniority, he said.

The Union government is awaiting some more information from the Bihar Police, after which it will take a decision on NEET-UG 2024 and whether there will be a retest

Asked why the Education Ministry is not scrapping NEET-UG as it did for UGC-NET — the government canceled the public examination key to getting teaching jobs in universities — Pradhan said the situation and scenario of the two exams at this moment are very different and not comparable.

In the case of UGC-NET, the Minister said that the government received strong inputs indicating that the UGC-NET paper was leaked on the dark net and that the leaked paper matched the actual NET question paper. He did not, however, reveal which paper was leaked.

“UGC-NET exam cancellation was not tentative or based on suspicion. I4C (Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre under the Ministry of Home Affairs) contacted us at 3 pm on Wednesday and told us that the paper may have been leaked on the dark web. We tallied the allegedly leaked paper and decided to cancel it only when we were satisfied that it was the actual paper. We immediately also sought a high-level CBI inquiry into this,” he said.

On Thursday, the CBI registered a case against unknown persons in the UGC-NET matter, on the basis of a complaint received from the Secretary, Department of Education. The case is under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC.

“When you are organising such a huge, prestigious examination for future assistant professors, PhD students, you have to maintain quality… with full pain we are taking responsibility. We have to rectify the system… Let me once again assure you that the government is committed to improvement. We will conduct a strict inquiry and bring that to a logical end. I want everybody’s support in this,” he said.

On the composition and mandate of the high-level committee, Pradhan did not reveal the names of the members but said the panel would include people from all backgrounds — academics, technocrats, even psychologists — and that it will be notified soon.

On whether the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, which was passed earlier this year, would be applicable to the UGC-NET paper leak he said, “The Law Ministry is on the job of framing rules. Very soon it will come out with stringent rules. These incidents have also given us a new dimension…to think…with a new approach. A few months back, we didn’t have any weapons to face these kinds of challenges. These kinds of challenges are not limited to a (specific) area. Nowadays, almost all states are affected by these kinds of problems. The primary job of law framing is over.”

Pradhan clarified that the current developments would have no effect on the NEET-UG retest scheduled to be held on June 23 for 1,563 candidates who were first awarded grace marks for loss of time experience on account of mistakes made by exam staff and invigilators at six centres in Haryana.