The Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra heard a batch of multiple petitions seeking re-examination of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) exam today, July 22.
In the previous hearing on July 18, the apex court had directed the exam conducting body to publish city and centre-wise marks by noon on July 20 to find any possible anomalies in the numbers.
In today's hearing the counsels accused that the exam was a systematic failure.
Senior Advocate Narendra Hooda said, "In this exam, there was a complete systemic failure. No address verification... there was no CCTV camera monitoring at any of the locations... there has been a live monitoring they say.. but I demolish it by saying that a wrong question paper was distributed in Sawai Madhopur and there was no surveillance.. it was on social media they got to know about the wrong question paper," reported The New Indian Express.
He also pointed out issues that there was no clarity on when the OMR sheets are sealed, time gap between the exam and the deposit of OMR sheets, lack of address verification, and so on.
Hooda further argued that the manner of conducting the entire exam was brittle, that it did not inspire confidence and that at every stage there was a possibility of a leak.
“As far as leak is concerned, Sanjeev Mukhya is a gangster, who is yet to be arrested. Solvers were taken from Rajasthan. Dissemination was through WhatsApp. It is not possible that the leak is confined to Patna,” Hooda said further, as stated by LiveLaw.
Justice Pardiwala contended that there are two ways of looking at the matter and conceded that there was a paper leak. He then asked if Hooda's argument was that systemic failure led to a paper leak.
The matter has been adjourned to be heard tomorrow.
