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As the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test - Undergraduate (NEET-UG) hearing ensued today, Thursday, July 18, the bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI), DY Chandrachud, Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra heard the petitions filed against the alleged irregularities of the exam.
Raging discussions continued on the National Testing Agency's (NTA) awarding grace marks to select students and 67 students scoring a perfect 720/720.
As the discussions and deliberations gathered pace, the CJI brought forth the issue of the reopening of the application window by the NTA, and the inadvertent change in exam centres opted by a few students.
Let us look into what happened.
CJI's queries on centre allotment
1) While the CJI questioned the NTA counsel on how many students changed their centre when the application window was re-opened, the NTA counsel declared that the current system is not equipped to detect that number. However, they stated that 15,000 students had utilised that opportunity.
2) The CJI further questioned that out of those 15,000 students:
a) How many had changed their exam centres
b) For how many days was the application window was open
c) When candidates fill out the form, do they opt for city or centres
As the NTA replied, "city" to the last question, it became clear to the bench that centres can only be allotted by the system.
The NTA further defended itself by saying that the information on centre allotment is discreet. "Centre allotment is only two days before the exam. So nobody knows which centre is going to be allotted," said the NTA counsel as per LiveLaw.
Contention with re-opening of window
3) Senior Advocate Narender Hooda then contended the issue of the re-opening of the window and stated that as per the NTA, it was based on the Rajasthan High Court's (HC) order, but it should be noted that the order was to do so just for one candidate, added Hooda.
The NTA then replied, "15,000 new applications were received...as far as change of centre, petitioners have focused only on Godhra," as per LiveLaw.
A few unanswered questions
4) The CJI then put forth the following queries:
a) Is there any data available on how many students had changed their cities, he further demanded to see the distribution and the change to any of the suspected areas
b) Was there any anomaly between the registration received on April 9 and 10?
c) Out of the students who changed centres, did they make it to the top 1.8 lakh students, getting a seat at a government medical college?
d) If the Rajasthan High Court's order was for one student, then why was the window opened for 15,000 other students?
e) How many of those 15,000 students were in the top 1.8 lakh?
A "student-friendly" measure
5) The solicitor general contended that the NTA had received several representations, hence, the re-opening of the application window was "a student-friendly measure". The CJI berated the SG and questioned, "This order was only for one student who didn't pay fee. And what does NTA do? Allows everyone to apply," as per LiveLaw.
6) The NTA counsel and the solicitor general rested their case by saying that out of the 15,000 students who had newly registered after the window was re-opened, only 44 students could qualify for the top 1.8 lakh students.
The solicitor general then emphasised that it was a "pro-student" measure, and not intended to help anyone in particular. The solicitor general further explained that the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras' report did not mention Jaipur among the topper list as there was no increase since last year.
The conversation then deflected to other issues, although there were a few unanswered questions, the Supreme Court will resume hearing pleas related to the NEET-UG 2024 controversy on July 22.
The NTA has been directed to release the NEET UG resulted, city and centre-wise, after masking the identity of the students who appeared for the exam.
