Supreme Court to hear petitions seeking cancellation of NEET-UG exam on Monday

Supreme Court to hear petitions seeking cancellation of NEET-UG exam on Monday

New Delhi: The Supreme Court is set to hear on Monday a batch of petitions alleging irregularities in the conduct of the NEET-UG 2024 exam and seeking its cancellation.

As per the list of cases published on the Supreme Court website, a bench headed by CJI DY Chandrachud will resume hearing the case on July 22.

In the previous hearing, the bench, also comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, had sought a copy of the report of the Bihar Police and its Economic Offences Unit (EOU) in the NEET question paper leak case.

Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, the second-senior legal officer at the Centre, has undertaken to place on record the copy of the report filed by the Patna police as well as the report filed by the EOU of Bihar police.

The NEET question paper leak case was cracked by the Patna police on May 5, the day of the exam, and an FIR was registered at the city’s Shastri Nagar police station.

The case was later transferred to the EOU of Bihar Police for investigation.

On June 23, the Centre decided to transfer the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Posting the hearing for July 22, the Supreme Court asked the National Testing Agency (NTA) to publish centre-wise results on its website after redacting personal information, including the roll number of candidates.

At the hearing, the Supreme Court had asked the applicants to explain that the leak was so systematic that the examination should be cancelled in its entirety and restarted.

She reiterated that if the tainted cases cannot be separated from the untainted cases, the entire review must be annulled.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had directed the NTA to disclose all information regarding the nature of the leak of documents, the locations where the leaks took place and the time gap between the time of the leak and the conduct of the examination.

It also asked the CBI to file a status report indicating the progress of the investigation and the material collected during the investigation.