NEET UG 2024: Supreme Court refuses to stay release of results over alleged paper leak

Supreme Court on Friday refused to grant a stay on the declaration of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) undergraduate exam results. The court was hearing a PIL alleging incidents of question paper leak of the NEET exam conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on May 5. 

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala, and Justice Manoj Misra agreed to examine the PIL by one Vanshika Yadav. However, it refused to entertain senior advocate Narender Hooda's plea for a fresh examination or stay on declaration of results.

"Stay on declaration of results will have huge consequences and impact more than 23 lakh students who took the test," the bench said.

The petitioner said, "Question paper leak undermines the merit-based selection process for medical colleges, affecting the future of countless aspiring doctors. The leakage skews the results in favour of those who had access to the leaked papers, disregarding the efforts of honest and meritorious candidates." 

The NTA has also denied the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak incident or the re-conduct of the exam. Speaking to Education Times, a senior official of NTA stated that there will be no re-exam for NEET UG and the agency stands by its May 5 statement that there was a case of distributing the wrong question paper, but there was no incident of paper leak.  

NEET UG exam was conducted for over 23 lakh students across 4750 centres in 571 cities (including 14 cities abroad). On the day of the exam, many students and activists alleged paper leak. The students also took to social media where they referred to past instances when the government had cancelled the examinations following cases of paper leak. 

According to reports, the question papers of NEET-UG and their answers were provided to around 20 aspirants a day before the NEET exam. This came days after the arrest of 13 people, including four examinees and their parents. Candidates from different places in Bihar were brought to a rented accommodation at Ramkrishna Nagar in Patna, where they were provided with the question papers and answers.

The Patna police had received a tip-off about the suspected paper leak about a couple of hours before the exam. One of the main conspirators Sikander Yadavendu (56) and his driver Bittu Kumar (38), a resident of Rohtas district, were arrested from the Shastri Nagar police station area, and the aspirants and their parents were held after the exam.