Supreme Court Seeks NBE's Response on Plea Seeking Disclosure of Answer Keys
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has asked the National Board of Examinations (NBE) to respond to a plea seeking disclosure of answer keys and question papers of the National Eligibility-and-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2024 examination along with other measures to ensure transparency in the PG medical entrance test.
After several controversies, NBE conducted the NEET-PG 2024 exam on August 11 and its results were declared on August 23. The counselling for admission to PG medical courses is set to commence from September 20.
The counsel for the petitioner, Senior Advocate Vibha Makhija pointed out that NBE has not released either the question papers or the answer keys. She further added that without knowing the correct answers, it would not be possible for the candidates to assess their performances transparently. She submitted that when the scorecard was released, it did not tally accurately for many candidates.
She also referred to Clause 10.4 of the Information Bulletin, which states that there would be no provision for re-evaluation or re-checking or re-totalling of responses.
Also Read: NEET PG 2024 2nd Shift Candidates Allege Normalisation formula 'scam'
Agreeing to consider the matter, the Apex Court bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra ordered, "Serve the NBE, we will list it next Friday, liberty to serve standing counsel."
"Serve a copy of the petition, we will ask for some assistance from the other side," the CJI further added.
As per the latest media report by Live Law, the plea pointed out how the exam format was changed just one month before the scheduled date and the exam was converted into a two (2) session examination with separate papers for each session which is against NBE's guidelines of having one common examination.
Regarding the issue of non-disclosure of exam question-answers, the plea stated, "There is a clear lack of transparency in conduct of examinations of NEET PG 2024 since none of the documents which can allow a student to check his/her performance are supplied by the Respondents i.e. neither the (a) question paper, nor (b) the Response sheet filled in by candidates, nor (c) Answer Key is supplied to the students, and merely a score card has been provided along with list of attempted correctly/attempted wrongly sections. The students on perusal of the score cards have found discrepancy in the total number of questions that they attempted which are found to be different than what is stated in the score cards issued to them. Thus, there is a basic flaw in the conduct of the examinations which goes to the root of the matter. However, there is no redressal of the above, and an unfettered power has been vested in the Respondents to conduct examinations, without the necessary checks and balances."
The petitioners also raised grievances against the new marks normalisation method. On this issue, the plea mentioned, "A new procedure for normalization of scores (based on a system applied in AIIMS which has a different kind of paper) was introduced by the Respondents for calculation of scores obtained by candidates in Session 1 and session 2 and for tie breaking it would be counted to the 7th decimal, which is completely arbitrary as two classes of candidates have been created without any reasonable nexus with object being sought to be achieved i.e. getting the best suited candidates their opted specializations."
"The normalisation procedure has completely altered the ranks that students expected to obtain based on their performance in the examination and it has led to clumping of students at each decimal, which would not have happened in case of counting of actual marks. Thus, the specialities will be exhausted on account of some superficial criteria prescribed by the Respondents, which is not reflective of the best candidates available," it added.
The matter has been listed for further hearing on September 20, 2024.
Previous Plea before Supreme Court:
This is not the first time that the doctors are demanding the release of NEET PG answer keys. Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that back in 2022, the 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.
However, earlier in June 2024, the Apex Court bench dismissed the plea after taking note of the passage of time since the conduction of the NEET PG 2022 examination.
Also Read: Supreme Court junks Plea Alleging Discrepancies in NEET PG 2022 Scores
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