The Apex Court on Tuesday sought responses from the Central government and the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the exams, on a plea seeking to hold a fresh examination on grounds of alleged question paper leak and other malpractices. However, the Court refused to stay the counselling of successful candidates for admission to MBBS, BDS and other courses.
In India, there are some exams that change the fate of the entire family. For such exams, children prepare and work hard for years and parents even mortgage assets to get their children into good coaching institutes, which increases their chances of success. For some, a single exam is a hope that will change their and the fate of their family.
NEET-2024 was dragged into controversy on the day of the examination, May 5, when there were rumours that the paper had been leaked. On May 7, Patna police arrested 13 people in the case of paper leak, but due to the ongoing election process, this news did not get much traction.
There are four subjects, Physics, Chemistry, Zoology and Botany, and in each subject 50 questions are asked, from which a maximum of 45 questions are considered for evaluation. In all, there are 180 questions. Every correct answer carries four marks and for a negative answer one mark is deducted. That means if you have answered 180 correct answers and got full marks, then your maximum score will be 720 marks.
However, some students notched scores that are not mathematically possible. If someone answered 179 questions correctly and left one question, that is no negative marking, then they can get 716. If 179 are correct and one is wrong, then the total score will be 716-1, which is 715. Mathematically, it is impossible to get between 716 and 720, but there are many toppers who have got 718 and 719.
According to the NTA, in some exam centres, due to external factors, time was wasted. For this loss of time, students have been compensated and the NTA has given grace marks. NTA has given reference to a Supreme Court judgment of 2018, but the said judgment is exclusively for the CLAT exam.
The NTA had said that NEET results would be released on June 14. But, suddenly, without any explanation, they were released on the day of the Lok Sabha election results. While the media and the whole country were focussed on keeping track of the election results, except for the students nobody bothered much about NEET. Maybe this was the plan of the fraudsters.
When students, teachers and parents started looking at the results closely, many problems and many questions began to arise. There are eight toppers whose serial numbers are very close to each other or consecutive. Possibly, all these eight toppers were either sitting in nearby centres or in the same centre. And there are many other instances such as videos on social media of students and parents pointing out that students who couldn’t even crack their HSSC exams have topped the NEET.
There’s yet another reason that attacks the sanctity of the exams. This time, the cut-off has become very high. The expectation was that the cut-off would be around 625, but infact the cut-off has gone up to 650. That means from the students who scored between 720 and 650, 30,000 ranks have been filled. For the first time in the history of NEET, such a high cut-off has been set.
This gives the privatisation of medical education an upper hand and institutes are at will to sell their management quota seats at a premium price to aspiring candidates. Those who cannot afford to pay the hefty fees – in some cases running into crores of rupees, their dreams are shattered and all their efforts are in vain.
A report by Indian Express on June 8 revealed that in the last five years, there have been 41 cases of paper leaks, impacting 1.4 crore students and aspirants. Some examples are the teacher eligibility tests in Rajasthan and UP, police recruitment in Karnataka and Assam, and the engineer recruitment in Telangana. Somewhere before the exam, the paper starts circulating on WhatsApp; somewhere a State employee steals the paper and distributes it; or someone hacks the server and takes out the paper.
Goa too has been a victim in the recent past and there have been allegations of fraudulent recruitment.
The Supreme Court has an enormous task at hand. On one hand, it has to decide on the NEET-2024, while on the other hand, it has to restore the faith of lakhs of students and parents in competitive exams. The Judges of the Apex Court will have to bring the authorities to accountability and punish those who are hand-in-glove with the fraudsters. After all, it’s the future of the country that’s at stake.
