Supreme Court slams NTA, asks Centre to completely restructure NEET exam process

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court, which rebuked the National Testing Agency (NTA) for the irregularities in the NEET UG examination, directed the central government to completely restructure the exam process.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra also reiterated that there was no systemic breach in NEET-UG 2024 exam beyond Hazaribagh and Patna and, hence, no retest would be needed with respect to this year's NEET.

The expert panel led by former ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan, appointed to rectify the lapses, will submit recommendations to the Union Education Ministry by September 30. The Centre should comprehensively revise the exam process based on this report within one month, the apex court said.

The judgment written by the Chief Justice himself enumerated the lapses on the part of the NTA. The court also warned the NTA not to repeat this. The court reminded Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the Centre and NTA, that the flip-flops of the NTD do not serve the interests of the students.

The bench also questioned the NTA's action of awarding grace marks to 1563 students who lost time after being given the wrong question papers. Although the decision was later reversed, a retest had to be conducted for those students.

"One physics question had multiple correct answers. Hence, the NTA decided to award full marks to all students for that question. As a result, 44 people got full marks (720). When the result was updated after deciding on one correct answer, only 17 people got the first rank," the bench pointed out.