NEET PG: Does publishing answer keys compromise exam integrity? Supreme Court to decide

New Delhi: Emphasising transparency as an important factor, the Supreme Court today mentioned that it will examine whether publishing the answer keys for the postgraduate medical entrance exam- NEET PG, would compromise the integrity of the examination.

However, the Apex Court has clarified that it will not go into individual allegations of discrepancies in the NEET-PG 2025 exam. During the hearing, the counsel for NBE referred to the policy under which the students are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement with regard to the answer keys.

When the NBE's counsel informed the bench that it is an unwritten policy, the Apex Court asked the NBE to disclose its clear stand on this.

These directions were issued while the bench was hearing a batch of pleas raising various issues regarding the NEET-PG exams, including disclosure of answer keys as a matter of transparency, etc. These pleas have been filed seeking measures to ensure increased transparency in the NEET-PG exam, including the publication of answer keys.

Also Read: NEET PG Transparency: Supreme Court seeks response from NBE, hearing postponed

During the hearing, the Court asked why these matters were before this bench since these matters had been heard by the Apex Court bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan, which had issued notice on September 26 in three petitions seeking publication of the answer keys in the NEET-PG exam and raising the issues concerning transparency in the exam.

As per the latest media report by Live Law, while it was unclear why these matters were before the present batch, the counsel for the National Board of Examinations (NBE) submitted that they were very clear regarding their policy that the students are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement about the answer keys.

Taking note of this, Justice Narasimha asked if the Court could take a similar approach as it took in the UPSC matter, where the Commission introduced drastic changes in its policy to provisionally publish answer keys after the preliminary examination.

In response, the counsel for NBE submitted that these petitions were being pushed by coaching institutes since they want to get hold of the answer keys for the purpose of question booklets. Further, the counsel argued that releasing the answer key would compromise the quality of the examination.

On this, Justice Narasimha asked where their policy was stated. Even though the counsel initially said that it is available on the website, later it was clarified that it was an unwritten policy which has been going on as a matter of convention.

Accordingly, the top court bench has now asked NBE to seek instructions on the policy and disclose its clear stand on this. The National Board of Examinations will now have to file an affidavit in this regard, adds Livelaw report.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that back in April, 2025, the top court bench had issued directions to NBE for publication of raw scores, answer keys, and normalisation formulae for transparency. However, shortly after, the Court ordered to conduct the NEET-PG 2025 examination in a single shift. The pleas seeking transparency in the PG medical entrance test are still pending.

Two pleas in this regard were filed before the Apex Court, while one plea has been filed by the United Doctors' Front (UDF), the other one by a group of NEET-PG 2025 aspirants who challenged the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences' (NBEMS) mechanism of disclosing the answer keys.

In the second plea, the aspirants challenged 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."

Also Read: NEET PG 2025 transparency plea in Supreme Court- Next hearing on November 7