Supreme Court To Resume Hearing On NEET-PG 2024 Transparency Petition

The Supreme Court will resume hearing a petition on Friday that challenges the National Board of Examinations’ (NBE) refusal to disclose question papers, answer keys, and candidates’ response sheets from the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024 exam.

The NEET-PG exam took place on August 11, with results announced on August 23. A bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud will hear the matter on September 20, as listed on the court’s website.

Last week, the bench, which includes Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Miara, agreed to review the issues raised in the petition and instructed the petitioners to serve copies of the plea to the NBE, in addition to the standing counsel.

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The petition asserts a significant lack of transparency in the examination process, claiming that students have not received critical documents to assess their performance. It points out that candidates received only scorecards and did not have access to the question paper, their response sheets, or an answer key.

Filed by advocate Parul Shukla, the plea emphasizes that previous years’ results provided candidates with detailed scoring information, including the number of correctly and incorrectly answered questions. However, the results released on August 23 did not include this crucial information.

The petition argues that the NBE’s handling of the NEET-PG 2024 exam is arbitrary and violates the principles of transparency and fairness outlined in Article 14 of the Constitution of India. It highlights that this year’s examination took place in two shifts, deviating from the traditional single-shift format that has historically ensured uniformity and fairness.

The petition further describes a “serious patent defect” in the examination process that requires attention to establish a transparent and effective system. Given that NEET-PG ranks influence candidates’ opportunities to pursue their desired courses, even slight variations in scores could hinder their chances of specialization.

In August, the Supreme Court rejected a separate plea to reschedule the NEET-PG 2024 exam, stating that it could not disrupt the process for the sake of a few petitioners when more than 200,000 students were affected. Chief Justice Chandrachud remarked, “We cannot jeopardize the careers of two lakh students at the behest of four-five petitioners.”

The petition had also called for a postponement of the exam, citing inconvenient city allocations for candidates and a lack of clarity regarding the normalization formula for the four sets of question papers, which could lead to arbitrary outcomes.