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Journalism of Courage
The National testing Agency (NTA) on Sunday dismissed reports of a “leak” of the NEET-UG exam question paper. The test was conducted in 557 cities across the country and 14 cities abroad on Sunday.
Several social media posts later claimed that the question paper was leaked.
At one centre in Rajasthan — Girls Higher Secondary Adarsh Vidya Mandir, Sawai Madhopur — Hindi medium students complained that they were handed English question paper. The NTA admitted to the “error of wrong question paper”, but refuted the reports of paper leak.
“The instances of ‘paper leak’ being claimed are completely false… In an isolated incident at Girls Higher Secondary Adarsh Vidya Mandir, students were given English medium question paper by mistake and by the time the invigilator could correct the mistake, the students forcefully walked out of the exam hall with the question paper,” a senior NTA official said.
As per the rules, students are only allowed to exit the hall with the question paper after the exam. Some students walked out forcibly, following which the question paper was circulated on the Internet around 4 pm, said the official, adding that by that time the exam had already started at all other centres. “So, there has not been any leak of the NEET UG question paper,” the official said.
NEET-UG 2024 was conducted from 2 pm till 5.20 pm. This year, a record 23 lakh candidates registered for NEET-UG exam, of whom over 10 lakh were male, over 13 lakh were female and 24 students registered under the third gender. Region-wise, Uttar Pradesh registered the highest number of candidates (3,39,125 registrations), followed by Maharashtra at 2,79,904, and Rajasthan at 1,96,139. Southern states Tamil Nadu registered 1,55,216 applicants, while Karnataka registered 1,54,210. In 2023, a total of 20,87,449 candidates had registered for NEET-UG 2023.
