The Centre on Wednesday submitted its affidavit to the Supreme Court in the NEET-UG case, refuting allegations of widespread misconduct in the medical entrance exam held on May 5.
During a hearing on Monday, July 8, the Supreme Court requested responses from the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) regarding the extent of the alleged paper leak and potential measures to distinguish wrongdoers from other candidates.
In its affidavit, the government included a report from IIT Madras following data analytics on the NEET-UG exam, stating, “neither any indication of mass malpractice nor a localised set of candidates being benefitted leading to abnormal scores”.
“The marks distribution follows the bell-shaped curve that is witnessed in any large-scale examination indicating no abnormality,” the affidavit reads.
The Supreme Court is considering a group of petitions concerning reported irregularities in the medical entrance examination. Some petitions request the cancellation of the exam and a fresh conduct, alleging irregularities and malpractices in the May 5 test.
During a hearing on Monday, Chief Justice DY Chandrachud commented that the leak of the question paper was an “admitted fact” and emphasized the importance of understanding the extent of the leak before deciding on a re-examination, stating, “we must be conscious of the extent of the leak as we are dealing with 23 lakh students”.
“The Union of India is taking all-round efforts to device solution-oriented mechanism while ensuring that on one hand no candidate guilty of malpractice gets any benefit and on the other hand, ensuring that 23 lakh students are not required to be burdened with a fresh test merely based upon unsupported apprehensions,” the affidavit reads.
Accusations of irregularities in the NEET-UG exam, including allegations of paper leaks and discrepancies in the allocation of grace marks, have triggered protests and political criticism from opposition parties nationwide. A total of 67 students initially achieved a perfect score of 720, raising suspicions due to six top scorers coming from a single center in Haryana.
The Centre attributed the rise in students’ marks to the reduction in syllabus.
“There is an overall increase in the marks obtained by students, specifically in the range of 550 to 720. This increase is seen across the cities and centres. This is attributed to 25 per cent reduction in syllabus. In addition, candidates obtaining such high marks are spread across multiple cities and multiple centers, indicating very less likelihood of malpractice,” the Centre’s affidavit reads.
According to the affidavit, the Centre stated that counselling will commence in four phases beginning from the third week of July.
“If a candidate is found beneficiary of any malpractice, his/her candidature would be cancelled at any stage during the counselling process or even afterwards,” the affidavit reads.
“If an exercise is to be conducted by NTA and by the Union government so as to identify any further beneficiaries of the question paper leakage, a considered decision at the policy level would have to be taken by the government on the status of the counselling,” it further read.
