On Thursday, the Education Ministry, on behalf of the central government has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court expressing its unwillingness to conduct re-test of NEET-UG. The affidavit noted that irregularities, cheating and malpractices have been observed but there is no mention of paper leak.
It went on to add that since there's no proof of any large-scale confidentiality breach in an examination conducted pan-India, it would not be rational to scrap the entire examination and do a re-test.
“It is submitted that in any examination there are competing rights that have been created whereby the interests of a large number of students who have taken the examination without adopting any alleged unfair means must not also be jeopardized. Scrapping the exam in entirety would seriously jeopardize the lakhs of honest candidates who attempted the question paper in 2024,” the Ministry's affidavit further added.
Along with submitting the affidavit, the centre also told the top court that it has asked the CBI to conduct a probe into alleged irregularities.
On June 11, the SC while hearing a plea to hold the exam afresh, noted the credibility of NEET-UG exam and sought clarifications from the central government and the National Testing Agency (NTA).
This is first time that the centre has put its stance on holding re-examination of NEET-UG on record.
The Chief Justice-led bench of Supreme Court is set to hear a batch of petitions on July 8. The pleas some sort of relief including re-examination or thorough investigation on alleged malpractices.
