A review petition has been filed in the Supreme Court against its recent verdict refusing to conduct NEET-UG 2024 exam afresh.
The review petition filed by one of the petitioners, under Article 137 of the Constitution, challenges the decision rendered on July 23, which had said that there was no “systemic leak of question paper” breaching the sanctity of the entire competitive exam.
Generally, review pleas are tested on very narrow grounds like mistakes of law, errors apparent on the face of the record, etc., and are often dismissed in chambers and are rarely given an open court hearing.
In its detailed judgment, a bench headed by CJI D.Y. Chandrachud said that it was mindful of the fact that directing a fresh exam would be replete with serious consequences for over two million students who had appeared for the NEET-UG exam held on May 5.
However, the bench, also comprising Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, clarified that its order won’t prevent authorities from taking action against candidates who had secured admission using malpractices.
Expanding the remit of the High-Level Committee of Experts constituted by the Centre in the wake of the NEET-UG examination controversy, the SC directed the expert panel to formulate a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) regarding the timeline for registration, change of exam centres, sealing of OMR sheets and other processes related to the conduct of exams.
“The report of the committee shall be submitted to the Union Ministry of Education by September 30. The Ministry of Education shall take a decision on the recommendations made by the committee within a period of one month from receiving the report,” ordered the apex court.
The Union Ministry of Education established a seven-member expert panel — headed by Dr K. Radhakrishnan, former Chairman of ISRO and Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Kanpur — to recommend effective measures for the conduct of transparent, smooth and fair examinations by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
The High-Level Committee of Experts was formed after the SC asked the Centre to detail the steps taken to ensure the sanctity of the NEET in the future.
The Supreme Court also deprecated the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) decision to award compensatory marks to 1,563 students on account of loss of time, which was later recalled after several petitions were filed before the top court.
Further, it asked the NTA to re-tally the marks afresh given the opinion rendered by the expert panel of IIT Delhi in respect of a contentious physics question.
As many as 44 candidates were able to secure full marks because of NTA’s decision to treat two options as the correct answers to the ambiguous question.