'Won't Order Another Counselling': SC On Plea For Answer Keys & Question Papers Of NEET-PG

The petitioners have sought the disclosure of answer keys and question papers for the 2024 exam and a measure to increase transparency.

The Supreme Court will hear a writ petition on Wednesday, that seeks measures to enhance transparency in the conduct of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-PG 2024. Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde made an urgent mention before a bench of Justices BR Gavai and AG Masih, regarding the third round of counselling for the NEET-PG exam, requesting that the matter be heard promptly.

However, the defendant informed the Court that the counselling for the third round had already commenced and ended on January 4.

Justice Gavai mentioned that the Court was not able to hear the matter on Tuesday, as they were already in the midst of hearing another case. He asked the counsel to mention the matter again on Wednesday. According to Live Law, he said that if the counselling is over, the bench will dispose of the matter and won't order fresh counselling.

In the main writ petition, the counsel has sought the disclosure of answer keys and question papers for the 2024 exam and a measure to increase transparency.

The plea states that the exam format was altered just a month before the scheduled date, with the exam being changed to a two-session format, each with separate papers. This change, the plea states, goes against the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences’s (NBE) guidelines, which mandate a single common examination.

There is a clear lack of transparency in the NEET PG 2024 examination process, as the necessary documents that would enable students to assess their performance are not provided by the defendants. These documents include the question paper, the response sheet filled out by candidates, and the answer key. Instead, students are only given a scorecard that details the sections with questions they attempted correctly or incorrectly.

"The students on perusal of the score cards have found discrepancy in the total number of questions that they attempted which are found to be different than what is stated in the score cards issued to them. Thus, there is a basic flaw in the conduct of the examinations which goes to the root of the matter. However, there is no redressal of the above, and an unfettered power has been vested in the defendants to conduct examinations, without the necessary checks and balances," the petition said.

A new score normalisation procedure, based on the AIIMS system, was introduced for Session 1 and Session 2 scores, with tie-breaking to the 7th decimal. This method is considered arbitrary, creating two classes of candidates without a clear link to the goal of assigning the best-suited candidates to their chosen specialisations.

The normalization procedure has altered expected ranks, causing clustering at each decimal point. This may lead to specialisations being allocated based on superficial criteria, rather than the best candidates.

 

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