On Thursday, the Supreme Court mandated the National Testing Agency (NTA) to release the marks of all students who took the NEET-UG 2024 exam. The results must be posted on the NTA’s website, sorted by city and centre, with student identities masked. This directive comes in response to a series of petitions calling for the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2024 exam due to allegations of a paper leak and malpractice.
The Supreme Court bench, led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and including Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, gave the NTA until Saturday noon to complete this task. The court scheduled the next hearing for Monday.
Petitioners had argued that the NTA had not published complete results, making it difficult to verify the center-wise marking patterns. Senior Advocate Narender Hooda, representing the lead petitioners, emphasised that the candidates were disadvantaged as they had no access to the CBI status report or comprehensive exam results.
In light of these arguments, the bench ordered, “The petitioners have argued for greater transparency by publishing the NEET-UG 2024 results, detailing marks by centre and city while ensuring student identities are masked.”
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta opposed the publication of center-wise results, citing privacy concerns. However, Chief Justice Chandrachud highlighted the necessity of analysing the complete data to determine if the paper leak, confirmed in Patna and Hazaribagh centres, had affected other locations as well. The Court suggested using dummy roll numbers to protect student identities.
Initially, the Court directed the NTA to publish the results by Friday 5 PM, but Senior Advocate Naresh Kaushik, representing the NTA, requested more time to process the results of over 2.3 million students. Consequently, the deadline was extended to Saturday.
During the day-long hearing, the Court raised significant questions and made key observations, underscoring the importance of transparency and data analysis in addressing the alleged exam irregularities.
