The Delhi High Court (HC) has scheduled the next hearing in the University Grants Commission - National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) June 2024 case, for January 7, 2025.
Advocate Ujjawal Gaur, representing the petitioners, shared his expectations, saying, “We are simply expecting that the issue impacting lakhs of students gets rectified through judicial intervention, and have been working for it persistently since the cancellation of the June 2024 examination.”
Here is a set of contentions…
The petition, filed on November 21, 2024, raised several concerns about the UGC-NET examination.
Students’ grievances include errors in score normalisation, failure to follow reservation policies for Other Backward Class (OBC), Scheduled caste (SC), and Scheduled Tribe (ST) categories, and the biased treatment towards Hindi-medium candidates as there were errors in translation.
The petition also pointed out the high fees charged for challenging mistakes in question papers, which made it difficult for students from economically weaker sections (EWS) to flag them.
Why need reforms?
Advocate Gaur emphasised the need for reforms, stating, “We actually need a better redressal mechanism so that students need not resort to protests such as those being organised in Bihar for Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC). In my opinion, there is a need for the establishment of the Central Examination Tribunal, and we’ll get it soon.”
Function of the tribunal
The Article 323-B of the Indian Constitution allows the state and Central governments to set up tribunals for specific matters to deal with serious disputes.
According to advocate Gaur, the Central Examinations Tribunal would work like the National Green Tribunal (NGT), and Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), and be a functioning “centralised examination body”.
Further elucidating on its functions he commented, “A centralised examination tribunal and regional tribunals would work in this manner. Let’s take this as an example — If a student from Kerala faces issues with any of the Central-level examinations, he can approach the south zone regional tribunal for fast-track resolution of this issue. Furthermore, the appellate jurisdiction of the regional examination tribunal would be the Centralised Examination Tribunal, Delhi,” Gaur said.
Explaining the above-stated point a bit more, he said, “So, this is going to be the hierarchy. The regional tribunals can also have jurisdiction over the issues of the state-level examination depending upon the list of jurisdiction,” he explains.
Recap
The UGC-NET June 2024 exam, conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on June 18, was cancelled by the Ministry of Education, following allegations of a question paper leak on the darknet. This move came amid a larger controversy surrounding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) medical entrance exam, both overseen by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan confirmed the leak, stating that the exam's integrity had been compromised, and announced a high-level committee to investigate the issue and recommend improvements to the NTA’s examination process and data security measures. In response to the controversy, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also registered a First Information Report (FIR) to investigate the leak.
The cancellation, affecting over 11 lakh registered candidates, sparked nationwide protests by students and criticism from opposition parties, who accused the government of jeopardising students’ futures. The issue led to advocate Ujjwal Gaur filing a petition in the Delhi High Court seeking reforms in the UGC-NET process.
