Supreme Court Refuses to Postpone NEET PG 2024

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today i.e. on August 9, 2024 dismissed the plea seeking a postponement of the National Eligibility-and-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024 examination, scheduled to take place on August 11, 2024.

Filing the plea before the Supreme Court, the petitioners highlighted the inconvenience faced by the candidates who were allocated test cities far away from their home. 

Apart from this, the petitioner also challenged the National Board of Examinations' (NBE) decision of holding the exam in two shifts and apply a normalisation formula.

However, the Apex Court bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JV Pardiwala and Manoj Misra refused to entertain the plea, Live Law has reported.

During the hearing of the case today, as soon as the matter was taken up, CJI Chandrachud observed, "So many problems in the country, now to reschedule the PG Exam."

At this outset, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, who appeared for the petitioners submitted "It was rescheduled once", while referring to the initial postponement of the exam in June.

Also Read: NEET PG 2024 exam centre row: Shashi Tharoor urges Health Minister Nadda to authorise enough centres in every state

When the Apex Court bench expressed its disinclination, Hedge pointed out that he was pressing only the second prayer i.e. directing NBE to conduct the exam in a single batch to ensure that a uniform and fair testing environment was provided to all the candidates. 

At this outset, the bench pointed out that only 5 out of more than 2 lakh students filed the plea. In response, Advocate Hegde claimed that the demand was backed by several students.

However, the bench was quoted observing by Live Law, "At the behest of 5 students, we can't put the career of 2 lakh students at jeopardy. Let there be certainty."

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that approaching the top court bench, the petitioner had submitted that the NEET PG 2024 aspirants were allocated test cities on 31.07.2024 and specific centres are scheduled to be declared on 08.08.2024.

While it was done to curb any malpractice in the examination, the petitioner submitted that given the short notice, it became highly difficult for the students to make arrangements for their travel to their specific cities.

The plea stated, ""...more than two lakh students are scheduled to appear in the aforestated examination. The examination is scheduled to be held in 185 test cities therefore resulting in non-availability of train tickets as well as hiking of air fares due to dynamic pricing thereby making it almost impossible for a large number of students to reach their test centres."

Apart from deferring the exam, the petitioner also sought a disclosure of the normalization formula of the four sets of question papers to the candidates to eliminate any possibilities of arbitrariness.

"The fact that the examinations will be conducted in two batches and that the formula for normalisation is unknown to the candidates thereby causing an apprehension...there is a likelihood that one batch of candidates may face a more difficult question paper than the other batch," the plea added.

The petitioner had prayed for an order directing the authorities to reschedule the NEET-PG 2024 examination, and any other order directing the authorities to conduct the exam in a single batch to ensure that uniform and fair testing environment is given to all candidates.

Earlier, the Apex Court bench had also dismissed the pleas seeking a reconduction of the NEET-UG 2024 examination in view of the allegations of paper leak. The Supreme Court had dismissed the pleas noting that there was not enough material to prove that the leak had happened at a systemic level.

Also Read: Inconvenient Exam City Allocation: Plea in SC Seeks Postponement of NEET PG 2024 Exam