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The Supreme Court on Friday pronounced a scathing judgment in the conduct of the undergraduate National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test 2024 and put the government on a deadline to completely restructure the exam process.
“The manner in which NTA organised the exam gives rise to serious concerns… NTA has sufficient resources at its disposal. It has adequate funding, time, and opportunities to organise exams such as the NEET without lapses of the kind that occurred this year,” Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, who authored the judgment, criticised the agency.
A three-judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice directed the Centre, acting through its high-powered committee headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation Chairperson K Radhakrishnan, to recommend and implement top-to-bottom overhauling of the exam process, including rectifying “serious security lapses”, introduce data protection measures, periodic audits, surprise inspections of exam centres, grievance redressal mechanisms for students and foolproof logistics, while specifically highlighting how question papers were transported in e-rickshaws to some exam centres during NEET-UG 2024.
The court pointed to how NTA initially gave 1,563 students grace marks after realising that they were allotted the wrong question paper, and then later decided to withdraw their scores and conduct a re-test.
“A body such as NTA which is entrusted with immense responsibility in relation to highly important competitive exams cannot afford to misstep, take an incorrect decision, and amend it at a later stage... Flip-flops are an anathema to fairness,” the court chastised.
The Chief Justice said the mishaps orchestrated by the NTA was a “luxury students cannot afford”.
“The Centre has to restructure the whole process of the NEET through the high-powered committee. It has to see to it that we do not have such examples in the future,” Chief Justice Chandrachud addressed the counsel for the Centre and NTA led by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta. The court directed the Radhakrishnan Committee to submit its report to the Ministry of Education by September 30, 2024.
The Ministry has to take a decision on the committee’s recommendations within a month thereafter and implement the plan of action. The government has to file a compliance report in the court.
“These flip-flops of the NTA do not serve the interests of the students,” Chief Justice observed. The court pointed to varying versions given by the NTA about when and where the question papers were breached, including that it was taken away by people who had breached the “rear door” of an exam centre.
The judgment then referred to the incident of NTA deciding to grant marks for two options to a Physics question in the NEET paper, reasoning that both answers were right. An Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) team, on a request from the Supreme Court, later reported that only one of the two answers were correct. “As a result of the NTA’s grace marks, an unprecedented 44 students got 720/720 in NEET-UG. The IIT(Delhi) report saw these 44 students lose marks and a revision of the rank list… There are deficiencies in the structural processes of the NTA… This Committee (Radhakrishnan panel) must rectify them,” Chief Justice Chandrachud directed.
Even while refusing to scrap NEET-UG 2024 on the ground that there was no “systemic breach”, a series of directions issued by the apex court to the government’s committee in the judgment highlight every single concern raised by petitioners about the security of the exam process in over 40 separate petitions.
The court expanded the ambit of the Radhakrishnan Committee to include improvement to the exam security and administration by introducing rigorous checks and balances at every stage from the setting of the question papers to the declaration of the final results.
The judgment ordered the framing of a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) detailing specific timelines to be set for various aspects, including registration of candidates, changes to preferred cities, sealing of OMR sheets after handing them over to invigilators, etc. It called for a process to review allotment of exam centres after petitions claimed there were instances of students inexplicably travelling from Godhra in Gujarat to Belgaum in Karnataka.
Addressing petitioners’ complaints of impersonation in NEET-UG 2024, the court called for a stricter procedure employing enhanced identity checks and technological advancements while complying with the laws of privacy. The court highlighted the need for “comprehensive CCTV surveillance of exam centres, real-time monitoring and recording of activities: “The aim is to deter and detect any malpractices and provide evidence in case of incidents.” A CBI probe revealed the breach which led to question paper leaks in Bihar occurred in an exam centre at a private school in Hazaribagh.
Published on August 2, 2024
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