High Scoring NEET 2024 Candidates move Supreme Court Seeking Retest, File Intervention plea

New Delhi: Amid the ongoing litigations concerning the National Eligibility-and-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 examination, a group of candidates who scored more than 640 out of 720 marks in the exam approached the Supreme Court seeking a retest.

Filing their intervention today i.e. on July 22, 2024, they urged the Apex Court bench to accept their application to be impleaded in the case "Surbhi Singh & Ors". 

Altogether six NEET UG 2024 candidates filed the intervention plea. All of them scored more than 600 marks and some even scored as high as 690 marks out of 720 marks in the NEET exam held on May 5th, 2024.

Therefore, considering their marks and the rank lists of the previous year, these students should legitimately hope for admission to the Government Medical Colleges.

However, approaching the Apex Court, they pointed out that with the unprecedented inflation in the current year's results, with as many as 67 candidates scoring full marks, their prospects for admission to the Government Medical Colleges were under a shadow.

In their plea, these students submitted that even though they did not file a plea for cancellation of the exam and sought a retest, they had been closely watching the proceedings which had been going on before the Supreme Court.

As per the petitioners, the deliberations during the proceedings strayed away from the core issues. They submitted that the only question was whether the integrity of the examination had been compromised or not.

"With the materials which have been placed on record before the Court, as also, in the public domain, there cannot be even iota of doubt anymore on the fact there has been a leak of the question paper at multiple points, besides other irregularities, and that the sanctity of the examination has been compromised. That there has been a question paper leak is nothing but an unfortunate and inconvenient truth, succinctly acknowledged by all," stated their plea.

"The sanctity of the examination being compromised being an undeniable fact, the only remedial step open is to conduct a re-examination. To conduct a reexamination would mean significant expenditure in terms of manpower and other resources. It would certainly mean a great amount of difficulty to those students who have scored high and thereby are entitled to admission. The vast majority of them are not even parties to the ongoing proceedings before this Court. However, there absolutely is no other option. The reason being that permitting admission based on the current examination results would mean absolute injustice to thousands of students, like the Petitioners, who have prepared for the examination for months, even years, hoping to secure an admission in a reputed medical college as a fruit of their hard work," it further added.

They argued that if the admissions were allowed based on the current results, students scoring high marks would also suffer. "If the admissions were to be permitted based on the current results, which are vitiated by leak, impersonation, attempt at a hasty cover up by granting of arbitrary grace marks, the faith, not merely of the honest students who have scored reasonably high marks, who under normal circumstances would have secured admissions, and their families, but the faith of the public at large in the national level competitive examinations conducted by the NTA, UPSC, would be put to jeopardy," they stated.

Therefore, seeking intervention, the petitioners submitted that while conducting a re-examination was no easy task, as a practical solution, a re-test could be held for 13 candidates who qualified in the exam.

"The Petitioners are aware that conducting a re-examination is no easy task. It has several ramifications. Therefore, one has to think of a practical solution. Out of the 24 lakhs who appeared in the examination, 13 lakhs have qualified. The total number of medical seats available is around 1,08,000. The re-test, therefore, need only be conducted for the 13 lakhs who have qualified. The reason is that NEET UG 2024 is not confined to MBBS alone, but includes BDS, Ayush courses like BAMS, BHMS, BUMS, BVSc, and other paramedical courses like nursing," the plea stated, while pointing out that there are 27,698 BDS, 31,811 BHMS, 50,720 BAMS, 525 B.VSc & AH, and 52,720 BNYS seats available.

They argued that holding the retest at least for these 13 lakh candidates would ensure that "no meritorious student is denied justice and would reduce the cost in terms of time, money, and manpower to reasonable limits. In other words, the NEET UG 2024 Examination, which is wholly vitiated, can be treated as the NEET 2024 Preliminary Examination. The further test to be conducted can be treated as the NEET UG 2024 Final Examination."

The petitioner students highlighted that there were only 55,000 government medical seats available which the students like the petitioners from humble backgrounds could afford. They also pointed out that private medical seats range anywhere between Rs 50 lakhs to Rs 1 crore. "The medical education is now an industry worth thousands of crores. The paper leak industry too, therefore, runs into crores of rupees," they submitted.

"The current system unthinkably faulty. 75 percent of all work of the NTA has been outsourced. Besides the permanent officials/staff, 426 are from outside, 45 on deputation, 147 on contract basis and another 325 entirely outsourced through private agencies. It would be wholly unrealistic to assume that criminals or persons who are complete outsiders, like one Mr. Sanjeev Mukhiya and others who have been booked by the Police/CBI, alone are responsible for the paper leak. The data published by the NTA establishes that students who have failed in Class 12 Board Examinations have scored more than 700 marks. Certain centres in Sikhar, Rajkot, Latur display abnormal results. Neither the NTA nor the CBI has no far reported or admitted any paper leak in respect to these and other centres which have shown abnormal patterns. The Petitioners believe that those involved with the paper leak industry who are well connected and have links with officials within the NTA are yet to be exposed," the plea further added.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court today i.e. on July 22nd, heard in detail about the pleas seeking a re-conduction of the National Eligibility-and-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 examination.

Appearing on behalf of the petitioners seeking a re-NEET, several counsels including Advocate Hooda, Advocate Helge and Advocate Nedumpara opined that there should be a re-test, at least for the 13 lakh candidates who qualified in the exam by scoring the cut-off 164 marks.

Also Read: NEET 2024: Hold Retest for 13 Lakh Candidates who Scored Cut-off Marks, Petitioners Urge Supreme Court