The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to publish the results of all the students in the NEET-UG Exams 2024, while maintaining the privacy of all the candidates. The matter will be again taken up for arguments on Monday. The Centre-wise results will be declared by Saturday by NTA on its website.
The CJI Chandrachud led bench rejected the Centre's contention that the data on exam centres should also be concealed along with the identity of students. The Supreme Court refused to entertain SG Tushar Mehta's prayer that exam centre wise data should not be disclosed.
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"The results should be declared separately, city and centre-wise. And the NTA should upload the results by 5PM tomorrow on their website," the bench said. However, after NTA sought more time, the top court extended the deadline till Saturday 12 PM.
The top court also asked for a copy of the Bihar police report and EOU report to be placed before it, which the petitioners alleged the NTA was concealing from the top court.
The CJI remarked that the fact that there was a leak at Patna and Hazaribagh is admitted.
"The question papers had been disseminated. We want to ensure whether this was confined to those centres or was the leak widespread. Students are at a handicap because they don't know the results. We want the students identity to be masked but let us see centre-wise what was the mark pattern," the CJI observed while passing the order.
The Supreme Court however refused to stop the counselling and said that it wants to conclude the matter on Monday. It was then, the lawyer for petitioners demanded that entire centre-wise and city-wise results be published so they can analyse the data to spot centres or cases where breach like Hazaribagh and Patna could have possibly taken place.
SG Mehta appearing for Centre said that the entire results are not published. "It is the personal property of the students. No exam does it."
CJI asked, "why can't you have dummy roll numbers in a sequence centre-wise?" The CJI observed that this will enable the petitioners to ascertain whether the paper-leak was on a large scale or not.
The Supreme Court has time and again said that a re-test will only be ordered if it can be established that the paper leak and its dissemination was on a large scale. The Centre and NTA today argued that the breach was confined only to two exam centres. However, the petitioners alleged that the Centre was concealin Bihar police's initial reports before the CBI took over the case.
The top court had also said that a significant time gap between the paper leak and the time of examination will play a decisive role in deciding if the paper was leaked at a large scale or not.
Senior Advocate Narender Hooda, appearing for the petitioners seeking retest submitted that the candidates are at a "handicap" since neither the CBI status report is shared with them nor the entire results have been published.
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