NEW DELHI: On July 23, the Supreme Court denied the request to cancel the NEET UG 2024 exam and conduct a retest. The Chief Justice stated that there was no evidence of widespread cheating or problems with the exam. Meanwhile, the education minister has directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to release a revised merit list, which will affect 44 top-performing students and may cause them to drop at least 88 positions in the rankings.

"There is currently insufficient evidence to prove that the exam results are invalid. " Data produced city-wise, center-wise, and a comparison of results in 2022, 2023, and 2024 do not show a systemic leak of question papers, indicating destruction of the exam's sanctity," Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, who presided over a three-judge Bench that included Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, reasoned.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), represented by Attorney General Tushar Mehta, and the government both get their point on the judgement. They contended that the leaks seemed to be mostly restricted to Bihar regions of Hazaribagh and Patna. As a result of the CBI's ongoing probe, several people have been taken into custody.

Senior advocate Narendar Hooda, representing the petitioners who want a NEET Re-test, argued that the main suspect linked to the paper leak has not been arrested. He pointed out that mobile phones used to share the leaked exam questions have not been found. Hooda claimed that the government's assurance that the leak only affected Patna and Hazaribagh is not credible. He emphasized that the integrity of the exam is in doubt until the court confirms that all individuals involved in the cheating have been identified.

The Chief Justice stated that it is not possible to cancel the entire NEET-UG exam because more than 2.3 million students took the test in 571 cities. Cancelling the exam would put these students' futures at risk. solely on the petitioners' assumption that the exam leak was not limited to Hazaribagh and Patna. The Chief Justice emphasized that there is currently no evidence indicating that the leak affected other areas of the country.

The court has decided not to allow a re-test, which means that the counselling process for students can start as scheduled on July 24, as the government informed the court. However, the ranking of students may change because the Supreme Court agreed with a report from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi). The report stated that a certain Physics question was "ambiguous" and confirmed that there is only one correct answer for that question, not two. The IIT Delhi panel concluded that the two answers provided contradicted each other.

As a result, over 420,000 candidates who chose the incorrect "possible answer" will likely lose the extra marks (grace marks) they received. Previously, during a court hearing, it was noted that 44 students achieved a perfect score of 720 due to these grace marks. The court did not implement its earlier suggestion to drop the penalty for those who selected the wrong answer, which means that candidates who answered incorrectly could lose up to five marks due to negative marking for that question.

The court emphasized that any students identified later as beneficiaries of the exam paper leak in the ongoing CBI investigation should not benefit from this illegal situation and should be excluded from admission.

The court declined to conduct a NEET Re-test for 1,563 candidates who obtained extra marks due to being given the incorrect exam paper. During at the hearing, Mr. Mehta stated that only 813 of the candidates took the re-test on June 23. The others most likely chose not to take the re-test since the court gave them the option of retaking the test or preserving their previous scores, which did not contain the extra marks.

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