Supreme Court junks Plea Alleging Discrepancies in NEET PG 2022 Scores

New Delhi: Considering the passage of time since the conduction of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduation (NEET-PG) 2022 examination, the Supreme Court, on June 11, dismissed the pleas that alleged discrepancies in the exam and sought disclosure of answer keys and answer sheets of the NEET PG 2022 exam.

The pleas were dismissed by the vacation bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah, who considered the petitions to be infructuous after the lapse of considerable time.

"These petitions are rendered infructuous due to the passage of time. In case the petitioners still have a grievance concerning the NEET examination of Undergraduate or Post-Graduate held in the year 2024, they may assail it on admissible grounds. These petitions are accordingly dismissed," the bench was quoted observing by Live Law.

The counsel for the 6 petitioners contended that the pleas would still be relevant since two of the petitioners would appear in NEET PG 2024, scheduled to be held on June 23. Referring to this, the counsel Advocate Avani Bansal submitted, "The trouble is they(National Board of Examination) are not allowing us access to answer keys, answer sheets, question papers(of NEET-PG 2022) ....the petitioners are still going to appear this time."

Also Read: Cannot put students in jeopardy: Supreme Court Refuses to postpone NEET PG 2022 Counselling

However, the bench expressed its disinclination to entertain the matter and dismissed the pleas, the Apex Court bench was quoted noting by Live Law, "we cannot keep all these matters pending unnecessarily."

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that doctors had filed pleas before the Supreme Court alleging serious discrepancies in the NEET-PG 2022 exam. In the plea, the MBBS graduates challenged the decision of the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBE) of not releasing the answer keys and question paper for the exam.

The doctors had also requested the court to set up a High Power Committee to examine the instances of alleged discrepancies in the scores so that fairness and transparency in the evaluation mechanism could be ensured. Apart from this, the plea further requested the court to frame guidelines for publishing question papers and answer keys after the examination.

It had also sought direction upon NBE for uploading individual OMR answer sheets in login account along with the question paper and the corresponding answer key, immediately after the examination and provide the candidates with an answer key and question paper for the exam, especially when they file an RTI application.

Back then, while considering the plea, the Supreme Court had refused to put a stay on the counselling process for the NEET-PG 2022 exam. The plea had been filed by doctors who alleged that they were not being granted re-evaluation even though there were serious mismatches in their NEET-PG 2022 scores.

Also Read: SC refuses to stay NEET PG Counselling 2022

The petitioners submitted that other prestigious examinations in India including NEET-UG have the option for the candidates to challenge the answer key. Citing the court order in the case of CBSE And Anr. v. Aditya Bandhopadhyay And Ors., the plea contended that the answer sheets were information under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act, 2005. Therefore, NBE is not exempted from providing information under Section 24 of the RTI Act.

It challenged Clauses 9.7 and 10.4 of the NEET-PG Information Bulletin stating that the contents of the exam are proprietary of NBE and no re-evaluation, re-checking or re-totaling is permitted. It averred that conducting the examination does not constitute a private activity and the checking and evaluation of answer sheets by an examiner and the marks assigned by them have nothing to do with the issue of privacy; therefore, NBE would not attract Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act.

Meanwhile, currently, the Supreme Court is considering petitions alleging a paper-leak scam in the NEET UG 2024 examination. The petitioners have demanded a fresh conduct of examination and they challenged the National Testing Agency's decision of granting grace marks to around 1600 candidates to compensate for their loss of time during the examination.

Also Read: 'Sanctity of NEET Affected!': Supreme Court seeks response from NTA, Refuses to halt NEET 2024 Counselling