'Is it because you got less marks?' Supreme Court asks petitioners in NEET PG Transparency case
Supreme Court of India
New Delhi: The plea seeking full disclosure of questions and answer keys for the National Eligibility-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) came up for a hearing before the Supreme Court today.
Even though the matter was listed for a hearing later, the Apex Court bench agreed to hear the issue on September 4 after an urgent application was filed, citing that the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) counselling is set to commence on or after September 5.
Questioning the intent of the petitioners, the top court bench adjourned the matter to next week for further hearing.
During the brief hearing, the petitioners explained that even though the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) had initially promised to publish all the questions along with the answer key for the NEET PG 2025 exam, it later issued a "corrective notice" and decided to publish the question IDs instead.
Also Read: NEET PG 2025 candidates move SC against new disclosure mechanism of answer key
As per the latest media report by Careers360, the Supreme Court bench asked the petitioners, "Why do you think there is no transparency? Is it because you got less marks?"
"Whenever the court tries to ensure a smooth process, people take undue advantage of it. Just take a chance, let’s go to the Supreme Court, invoke Article 32, ask for numbers, answer keys… Whatever you have performed…" the top court bench further added.
The petitioners contended that "no one can know the correct answer by looking at the question IDs". They added that NBE's decision undermines the purpose of the answer key, as candidates won't be able to verify the answers without the actual questions. Taking note of the submissions, the Court directed the respondents to collect the paper work and listed the matter for further hearing next week.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that a group of NEET-PG 2025 aspirants filed a plea before the Supreme Court challenging the "corrective notice" issued by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) on August 21.
The plea claimed that the new disclosure mechanism of answer keys, as announced by NBEMS, is "opaque, unintelligible and incapable of meaningful verification."
In the notice dated 21.08.2025, NBEMS mentioned that the sequence of questions asked within a section of the Question paper of NEET-PG 2025 is shuffled for different candidates, and the order of four options for a question are also shuffled for different candidates. Therefore, NBE had decided that the questions, correct answer key and responses marked shall be displayed as per the sequence in Master set of Question Paper used for NEET-PG 2025.
When the matter came up for hearing before the top court bench comprising the Chief Justice and Justice K. Vinod Chandran on September 1, 2025, the bench noted that the plea involved the interpretation of the order passed by the Apex Court on 29.04.2025. Accordingly, the bench directed to place the matter before the bench presided over by Justice J.B.Pardiwala.
In the order dated 29.04.2025, the Apex Court bench comprising Justice J.B.Pardiwala and Justice R. Mahadevan had issued 10-point directives to reform the National Eligibility-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) exam and the bench had also directed the National Board of Examinations (NBE) to publish the raw scores, answer keys, and normalisation formula for the NEET PG exam.
