Supreme Court issues notice to NTA over NEET-UG 2024 paper leak allegations: ‘we need answers’

“Let the counselling start. We are not stopping the counselling,” said Justice Nath as Senior Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara urged the court to stay the counselling.

Justice Amanullah told the NTA counsel, “It’s not so simple that because you have done it (conducted the exam), it’s sacrosanct. We need answers for that…The sanctity has been affected. So we need answers”.

The bench said it would post the matter for hearing immediately upon reopening of the court and added that if more time is needed to file the response, the court will stop the counselling.

The bench noted that a bench presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud is already seized if matter on the issue and is scheduled to hear it on July 8 and tagged the present petition also for hearing along with the other.

The fresh writ petition filed by a batch of students raised doubts about the sanctity of the May 5 exam in the light of allegations of exam paper leak and urged the court to cancel it and to direct NTA to hold it again.

In their plea, the students said, “After having stumbled upon news of the NEET exam paper leak they have been shaken at the core. Since, the breaking of news on the NEET exam paper leak, the Petitioners are under tremendous stress and anxiety … their family members nurtured the dream of Petitioners becoming a medical practitioner one day.”

Hearing a similar plea on May 17, a CJI-led bench refused to stay the declaration of the NEET exam results and posted the matter for hearing on July 8.

The Indian Express reported on June 6, after the NEET-UG 2024 results were declared on June 4, that out of the 67 top scorers, 44 got a basic Physics question wrong but were awarded “grace marks” because of an error in an older version of the NCERT Class 12 textbook.

More than 13,000 NEET-UG 2004 candidates challenged it, citing information in the textbook indicating a different answer, even though the provisional answer key released by the NTA on May 29 selected the correct answer from the choices given.