The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Centre to respond to a petition challenging lack of transparency in conduct of National Eligibility-cum-Entrance (NEET)-PG 2024 examination
A bench, led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, was told by senior counsel Vibha Datta Makhija for the petitioners that the Union health ministry has failed to appear before the court despite due notice.
It put this to the notice of advocate-on-record Parul Shukla and asked her to apprise the office of the Solicitor General, the country's second-most important law officer under the Centre and posted the matter for hearing on September 30 since NEET-PG counseling has already started.
NEET-PG exam was conducted by the National Board of Examinations (NBE) on August 11 and the results were declared on August 23.
Last week, the Bench, also comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, had agreed to consider the plea and had sought the responses of the NBE and the Union government in the matter.
NEET-PG aspirants, in their plea, said that introduction of two shifts, the normalisation method and change in tie-breaker criterion only three days prior to the examination have adversely affected the students.
It was the case of the petitioners before SC that NEET-PG information bulletin could be amended at the whims and fancy of the authorities and no rules or regulations existed governing the conduct of examinations.
Challenge to the practice of not disclosing question papers, answer keys, or response sheets of candidates for the exam this year by the NBE.
Plea said that there was a vivid lacuna of transparency in the conduct of the examination since none of the documents allowed students to check their performance, and added that neither question paper, nor response sheet filled in by candidates nor an answer key was supplied to the students, and merely a scorecard had been provided.
In the petition filed by advocate Shukla, it was underlined that whereas hitherto on declaration of results, the candidate used to get his total score along with the number of correctly attempted questions and the number of incorrectly attempted questions, his total score is not given this time in the result declared on August 23.
"The method/manner in which examination under the NEET PG 2024 is conducted by the Respondents (authorities) is manifestly arbitrary and against the principles of transparency and fairness in state action as enshrined under Article 14 of the Constitution of India," it added.
The plea said that NEET-PG had never been held in two shifts before and had always remained a single-shift and single-day examination to ensure a uniform examination standard and fairness of the national exam. It cited a "serious patent defect in the conduct of the examination," requiring redressal in order to achieve a clean, transparent, and effective system of examination which gives the best candidates.
"The NEET-PG is a multidisciplinary exam where one's rank also determines their ability to opt for the course and field of their choice. Any slight variation in marks would bar several candidates from specialising in their field of interest, it added."
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