Supreme Court defers hearing on NEET PG Transparency plea to September 26
New Delhi- The Supreme Court of India has once again postponed the hearing of a petition raising concerns about transparency in the National Eligibility and Postgraduate Entrance Test (NEET PG) exam for the academic year 2025.
The case was originally scheduled for a hearing in October, but was moved forward due to growing concerns about delays in counselling and procedural ambiguity. On this, the court had previously agreed to hear the case on September 4 and then on September 12.
Now, the hearing has been postponed to September 26, 2025 (Friday), reports EducationTimes.
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.
During a previous hearing of the case, the Supreme Court bench had questioned the intent of the petitioners and adjourned the matter to the next week for further hearing.
The Supreme Court bench had 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 had further added.
Meanwhile, another plea by UDF was filed earlier this year, and it had challenged the NBE's decision of NEET PG 2025 examination in two shifts and the normalisation formula adopted by NBE. Previously, the Supreme Court had directed NBE to hold the NEET PG 2025 exam in a single shift and it had earlier clarified that the issue related to the second relief claim would be considered after the conclusion of the examinations.
