The Supreme Court of India heard a batch of 40 petitions concerning various irregularities in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for Undergraduate (NEET UG) admissions 2024 yesterday, Thursday, June 18.
One of the key orders given by the bench, comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was to the exam conducting body National Testing Agency (NTA), directing it to release the full city-wise and centre-wise results of the exam without revealing the personal details of the students by 5 pm tomorrow, July 20.
During the hearing, Senior Advocate Narender Hooda, counsel for the petitioners expressed that the NTA did not declare the entire results of the exam, leaving them handicapped. He further added that the NTA should have at least declared the results of the one lakh odd students who qualified for admission.
This point was made in response to the CJI’s comment that the court would like the petitioners’ side’s assistance to determine the lines on which the investigation on the exam needs to be conducted, given that they can prove that the leak was systemic enough to warrant the cancellation of the exam.
Therefore, the importance of obtaining the entire results of NEET UG 2024 is to check whether specific cities or centres showed any aberrations in the results, say the petitioners.
Easier to spot red flags with full data, says petitioner
Elaborating on this, Prof Vishal Vaibhav, Assistant Professor at the Optics and Photonics Center at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and an expert on Numerical Analysis, says, “We are hoping that this new information gives us more clues to understand what is going on with the NEET UG exam, and how its results were calculated in their actuality.”
Prof Vaibhav’s cross-examination of IIT Madras’ analysis of the NEET UG results was submitted to the Supreme Court, along with other petitions about the exam.
He adds that analysing the new data could help reveal red flags at particular centres or cities. However, he also warns that no definitive conclusion could emerge out of the analysis.
“See, it is difficult to determine if a paper was leaked, or where leaked papers were bought because that also factors in human behaviour. Why would someone leak the question paper? Why would someone buy them? Statistically, it is impossible to prove these things,” the professor explains.
He adds, “While we don’t believe that we would find hard evidence of a widespread leak, the findings could point at irregularities in the scores. We can find out which cities or centres have an abnormally high number of 720/720 scores, for instance. These red flags make it easy to point at the scale of irregularities in the exam.”
Moreover, he also says that the results can help determine the lack of abnormalities in certain cities and centres and eliminate the element of doubt from them, reinstating some trust in the NTA.
To recall, several students from Haryana alleged that six candidates from the same centre in the state scored a perfect score of 720/720.
The professor also hopes that this time, the NTA releases the data properly.
“When asked to release the results of NEET UG 2024 in comparison to those of 2023, the NTA released the graph as an image file. I hope that they release the data in a more comprehensive format this time,” he says.
The next hearing of the case would take place on Monday, July 22.
