The Supreme Court today, on September 13, issued a notice to the National Board of Examination, seeking a response regarding a petition seeking disclosure of answer keys in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test - Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024 exam.
The case will now be taken up by the court on Friday, September 20.
A bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra heard a petition filed by 19 NEET-PG aspirants seeking transparency in the exam process.
Appearing for the petitioners, Senior Advocate Vibha Datta Makhija argued that in the absence of an official answer key for the examination, it is difficult to conclude whether or not the exam process was fair and transparent.
At first, the bench seemed to mistake the petition for being related to the NEET Undergraduate exam, as the Chief Justice questioned how students could object to incorrect questions in the absence of an answer key.
The CJI also said, “At some point we have to put a lid on NEET and now let the classes begin”
However, Advocate Makhija argued that the answer key as a system should be provided in all exams.
Now let us look at why the petition was filed
The candidates highlighted several discrepancies in the NEET-PG results this year.
Speaking purely in numbers, it was brought to the surface that as many as 2,185 candidates have scored above 99 percentile in this year’s NEET-PG examination, as per a report by Careers360.
Also, out of the over 2,16,000 candidates who appeared for the examination this year, there are only 1,400 unique percentiles.
Moreover, it was also highlighted that over 300 candidates had scored the same percentile
This unprecedented inflation in cut-off ranks and scores has led to concerns about the legitimacy of NEET-PG results, especially when the candidates are already demanding more transparency in the exam process.
To recall, the National Board of Exams for Medical Sciences introduced a two-shift exam pattern for NEET-PG this year, adding that the final raw scores of candidates will be normalised using the method utilised by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
However, the candidates seemed to have doubts about the mechanism already infamous for allegedly introducing discrepancies in results. It was also highlighted that no response sheet or answer key is released by the NBEMS for the NEET-PG exam, making the entire process highly non-transparent.
