No mass malpractice, NEET cancellation to hurt honest students: Centre to SC

The Centre has told the Supreme Court that the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) 2024 should not be cancelled since there is no evidence of any large-scale irregularities in the examination and that scrapping it would jeopardize lakhs of honest candidates.

In an affidavit filed in response to a slew of petitions challenging alleged irregularities and malpractices in the exam held on May 5, the Department of Education also submitted that the government has adopted a "solution-oriented" approach and cancelling the exam and holding NEET (UG) afresh would not be rational.

"In the absence of any proof of any largescale breach of confidentiality in a pan-India examination, it would not be rational to scrap the entire examination and the results already declared," it submitted. "It is submitted that in any examination, there are competing rights that have been created whereby the interests of a large number of students who have taken the examination without adopting any alleged unfair means must not also be jeopardized."


The top court is slated to take up the petitions for hearing on Monday.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts NEET, also filed an affidavit opposing the cancellation of the examination.

NTA submitted that the alleged malpractices (in the examination) were only in the Patna and Godhra centres, and that its data analysis indicates that the sporadic instances of alleged malpractices have not "impacted the sanctity of the entire examination".

The "alleged incident/attempt of leak does not seem to have any bearing on the conduct of the entire examination, as the number of students/candidates found to be involved by the investigating agencies is miniscule compared to number of candidates who appeared", NTA said in the affidavit.

"The cancellation of the entire examination on the basis of aforesaid factors would be hugely counterproductive and significantly harmful to the larger public interest, especially to the career prospects of the qualified candidates," it said.

NTA has contested the allegation of the petitioners that the number of students scoring high marks are only from certain centres.

Calling the allegation as "completely unsubstantiated", the agency said the result of top 100 candidates were analysed and it has been reported that they are distributed across 95 centres located in 56 cities in 18 states/union territories of the country.

This diverse distribution highlights the widespread participation and competitive spirit among students from different regions and educational backgrounds, it said.

NTA has further submitted that it has withheld results of the students involved in malpractices and issued show-cause notices to them for penal action and debarment.

It said NEET (UG) 2024, undertaken by 23 lakh students, has not suffered "systemic failure".