The Supreme Court Friday refused to interfere with a plea for rescheduling of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, NEET-PG 2024, scheduled for August 11.
Whereas for the petitioners, senior advocate Sanjay Hegde argued, "The number of centers for the conduct of the NEET-PG examination was reduced by NBE from the existing 1,200 to 500," this came against the backdrop of paper leaks and related issues that mired the conduct a few months ago for the NEET-UG examination.
Hegde submitted that two shifts would be required for NEET-PG as the number of centers would be reduced and even he was worried about the risks which may be involved in the normalization process.
The Bench, also comprising Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, refused to exercise discretionary jurisdiction as it cannot consider deferring the test involving 2 lakh students on the basis of the petition by some of the petitioners..
In its refusal to entertain the petition, the court reportedly argued, "We will not postpone or pass any orders. It will cause immense suffering to more than 200,000 students and as many as 400,000 parents if we take up this issue. We will not jeopardize the future of so many students on the basis of mere four or five petitioners."
Advocate Anas Tanwir, who appeared for students who had petitioned against the exam, had on Thursday urged the registry of the apex court to urgently list the case for hearing.
The petitioners contended that the present schedule of the exam and the arrangement of examination centres were in violation of the guidelines of competent authorities. The exam city allocation was not convenient to them, they pointed out, and sought disclosure of the normalization formula for the four sets of question papers.
Apprehensions were sought to be raised over any different level of difficulty in questions in the varied batches of the exam and it was pleaded that the formula for normalization be made public prior to the holding of the exam so that it should not be arbitrary in nature.
The petitioners also noted that while the test city allocations were announced on July 31, the centres were allotted and declared only on August 8. This kept candidates hit by various challenges to make travel bookings, including limited availability of train tickets and high-priced air tickets, the plea said.
Previously, on June 22, the Union Health Ministry had rescheduled the examination for NEET-PG, which was supposed to take place on the next day, in order to retain the sanctity of the examination process. Last year, the Supreme Court had also turned down the petitioners who had prayed for deferment of the NEET-PG 2023 examination.
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