‘This will affect lakhs of honest students’: Centre opposes cancellation of NEET-UG exam in South Carolina

New Delhi, July 5 The Centre, in a preliminary affidavit filed before the Supreme Court on Friday, opposed the batch of petitions seeking cancellation of the NEET-UG examination, for admission to undergraduate medical programmes, saying it would affect “hundreds of thousands of honest candidates” who appeared for it on May 5.

The Union Education Ministry has said that cancelling the entire exam would seriously jeopardise the interests of lakhs of honest candidates who attempted the May 5 exam this year.

“In the absence of evidence of large scale breach of confidentiality in a pan-India examination, it would not be rational to cancel the examination in its entirety and the results already declared. It is submitted that in any examination, competing rights have been created, whereby the interests of a large number of students who have appeared in the examination without adopting any allegedly unfair means should not also be compromised,” the affidavit said.

As for the alleged cases of irregularities including cheating, impersonation and malpractices, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is investigating and has taken over the cases registered in different states, he added.

The Centre said it is committed to conducting all competitions in a fair and transparent manner and that if, at the request of certain criminal elements, the confidentiality of the competitions has been violated, they must be dealt with severely and with the full force of the law to ensure that they are punished.

“The government is committed to ensuring the sanctity of examinations and protecting the interests of students. To ensure transparency, fairness and credibility of public examinations, the Parliament enacted the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 on February 12, 2024. The Act came into force on June 21, 2024 and provides for stringent penalties for offences related to unfair means in public examinations. The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Rules, 2024 under the Act were also notified on June 23, 2024,” he said.

Recently, the Supreme Court expressed reservations over the filing of a petition by a coaching institute alleging irregularities in the conduct of the NEET-UG exam.

“What are your fundamental rights that are being violated to enable you to maintain a petition filed under Article 32 of the Constitution?” a vacation bench had asked the senior counsel appearing for Xylem Learning, a training institution providing assistance to NEET students.

Meanwhile, Speaker Draupadi Murmu, in her address to a joint session of Parliament, asserted that the government was committed to conducting a fair investigation and ensuring strict punishment to the culprits in the document leak cases.

“We have already witnessed many cases of document leaks in different states. It is important that we rise above partisan politics and take concrete steps at the national level. The Parliament has also enacted a strict law against unfair means in examinations,” she added.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a batch of petitions relating to the NEET-UG exam, including its cancellation, on July 8.

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