A Division Bench of the Supreme Court, on Monday, August 29, heard a plea seeking action against the NTA (National Testing Agency) in a matter regarding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) PG 2022 exam. It was filed by a petitioner who alleged that there were discrepancies in his NEET score.
The Division Bench referred the case back to a Single Judge and clarified that all the issues "remained open". The Bench asked both the parties (the petitioner and the NTA) to take their arguments in front of the Single Judge, as mentioned in a tweet by Live Law.
Replying to the allegations mentioned by the petitioner, the NTA countered that when the petitioner had claimed inconsistency in the scores, the NTA had asked the petitioner to come up to it and see the answer sheets. However, the petitioner chose to go to the High Court instead.
To this, the Bench questioned why the High Court had ordered a CB CID (Crime Branch, Crime Investigation Department) investigation into the matter. The counsel for the NTA replied that it was ordered after the court had referred to the allegation in the petition that there were two different OMR sheets uploaded by the NTA in this case, as per a Live Law tweet.
The counsel further said that the OMR sheets in question are not uploaded by the NTA, but by the NIC (National Informatics Centre). The counsel clarified that it is not the NTA's "job" to upload. The NTA passes on the results to the NIC for uploading purposes. But, in this case, the NTA and the NIC have both asserted that there was only one OMR sheet uploaded. And the sheets referred to by the petitioner were not found in the NIC database.
The Bench took this fact into account and said that the matter would be heard by the Single Judge. The counsel appearing for the petitioner claimed that there was prima facie evidence. However, the Division Bench said that the matter has now been remanded. The Bench also stalled the CB CID inquiry.
