The National Testing Agency (NTA) has released comprehensive data from the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test – Undergraduate 2024 (NEET-UG), following a directive from the Supreme Court.
An analysis by HT revealed that while some centers exhibited a higher-than-average number of top performers, their success rates were generally in line with their respective cities’ overall performance.
The analysis also indicated that coaching hubs dominated the top rankings: Six cities—Jaipur and Sikar in Rajasthan, Delhi, Bengaluru in Karnataka, Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, and Kottayam in Kerala—accounted for a quarter of students in the top hundred ranks.
Certain anomalies were found in some centers. Seventeen centers in Haryana, Gujarat, and West Bengal had an unusually low proportion of candidates in the bottom 50%, without a corresponding increase in top performers.
Previously flagged centers showed no remarkable trends. Centers with prior reports of cheating or other irregularities showed performance either close to or worse than their city’s average.
Detecting a widespread paper leak statistically is challenging if such candidates are dispersed across many centers.
The exam has been highly debated, with concerns over its fairness and integrity, especially following allegations of question paper leaks and inflated scores, which have led to widespread student protests.
This year’s exam was held at 4,750 centers in 571 cities, including 14 abroad. The results, declared on June 4, sparked controversy when 67 candidates achieved perfect scores of 720, with some from the same center. A retest and the rollback of a grace-mark decision altered their results.
NTA officials did not respond to requests for comment on the data release.
Comparing the success rate of a center with that of its city reveals no conclusive proof of mass cheating. Some centers, such as Tagore P.G. College in Sikar, Junior Baselios English Medium School in Kottayam, and Danta Mahavidhalaya in Sikar, had 8%-10% of candidates finishing in the top 1%, slightly higher than their cities’ averages.
An anomaly was found in 17 centers in Haryana, Gujarat, and West Bengal, which had less than 35% of candidates finishing in the bottom 50%, but their top 1% performance was close to their cities’ averages, complicating conclusions about potential malpractices.
Keshav Agarwal, a member of the Coaching Federation of India, expressed concern over the concentration of high scorers in certain areas. “The result has shown shocking data and the concentration of high scorers has come from Sikar, Gujarat and Haryana and majority of the places are small towns and surprisingly Kota is missing,” he said. “From Gujarat itself we have 3,400 students above 600, from Sikar 4,300 and Haryana around 1,200, which is 11 percent of the students who have scored 600 plus all over India.”
Agarwal added, “The result definitely is skewed and this is just one year and if 2023 data is released then definitely there will be a lot of abnormalities and if comparison with board exam scores then many more aberrations will be seen and matter is much beyond paper leak and difficult to segregate beneficiaries.”
Previously flagged centers did not show unusual performance patterns. For instance, at Oasis School in Hazaribagh, where the principal was arrested, 0.71% of candidates finished in the top 1%, similar to Hazaribagh’s overall rate of 0.66%. Similarly, at Master Adityendra Government Senior Secondary School in Bharatpur, where impersonation was reported, 0.71% of candidates finished in the top 1%, below Bharatpur’s rate of 1.4%.
The Supreme Court’s review of NEET-UG’s validity is focused on two specific paper leaks in Patna and Hazaribagh, with a decision on scrapping the exam and ordering a retest pending the determination of whether the breaches were localized or systemic.
