NEET-UG Case Hearing in Supreme Court LIVE Updates: SC Defers Paper Leak Plea Hearing To July 18

The Supreme Court has deferred the hearing of NEET related petitions to July 18. The hearing will resume on next Thursday.

CBI has discovered significant irregularities in the NEET-UG 2024 exam at a center in Godhra, Gujarat. Several candidates from states like Odisha, Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh were allegedly manipulated into selecting Gujarati as their exam language. This was purportedly done to allow local individuals involved in the scheme to fill out their answer sheets, according to the CBI's report presented to a Gujarat court.
 

NTA in its affidavit revealed that NEET Counselling for admission to MBBS, BDS courses will begin in the third week of July. Earlier, it was scheduled to begin on July 6 which was later postponed. Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) will conduct the NEET-UG counselling. 

CBI arrested two more individuals from Patna in connection with the alleged paper leak case. This brings the total number of arrests to eight, with individuals apprehended from Bihar and Jharkhand.

CBI has filed the status report of NEET paper leak investigation in the Supreme Court. The report was submitted in a sealed envelope.

“The fact that the sanctity of the examination has been breached… compromised, is beyond doubt. Now the question is how widespread is the breach,”  Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud said on Monday. “If we are not able to identify candidates who are guilty of wrongdoing, the retest has to be ordered. If you can’t distinguish the grain from the chaff, tainted from the untainted, it has to be ordered…,” he added.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra on Monday asked the NTA to inform them about the measures taken by it to identify the centres/cities where leaks of paper took place and the modalities followed to identify beneficiaries of the leak and how the leak was disseminated.

The Supreme Court on July 8 said that there is no doubt that the NEET-UG held on May 5 was compromised by a question paper leak and asked the National Testing Agency (NTA) to apprise it about the steps taken to identify the candidates who benefited from the paper leak. The top court asked the National Testing Agency (NTA) and Centre to file their affidavits with all the details and sought a status report from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on July 10 in the NEET UG exam.

“The NTA, having come to know about the malpractice by individuals at Godhra and few centers at Patna, has made an assessment of the performance of all the appeared candidates at the concerned centers to come to the conclusion as to whether any tangible impact of the malpractice at that centers has taken place so as to have wide spread ramifications of impactable magnitude,” NTA said in the affidavit.

NTA said that it assessed the impact of paper leak in the overall examination after knowing about the malpractice by individuals at Godhra and few centers at Patna. It said that the alleged malpractices have not impacted the sanctity of the exam and has not resulted in any undue benefit.

National Testing Agency (NTA) has on Wednesday filed an affidavit on the order of the Supreme Court dated July 8. In its affidavit, NTA opposed the idea of conducting retest and said that the malpractice was not widespread. 

“The irregularities in the NEET exam cited in the petition are limited only to some centers in Patna, Godhra. At other places, the wrong methods used by some students to pass the exam are very few incidents in themselves and have no connection with the other incidents mentioned in the petition,” NTA in its affidavit said.

The Supreme Court of India will hear key petitions regarding the NEET-UG paper leak today, July 11. The hearing is expected to start after 1 pm.