Supreme Court to hear petitions over controversial medical school entrance exam today

NEET-UG 2024: The Supreme Court will hear on Monday (today) a batch of petitions related to the controversial NEET-UG 2024 medical entrance exam. The batch of petitions to be heard by the Supreme Court also includes petitions seeking cancellation of this year’s exam, which was held on May 5.

The case will be heard by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, according to a list of cases published on the Supreme Court website. According to the list, the bench will also comprise Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.

On Friday, the Centre opposed the cancellation of the May 5 exam in the Supreme Court, saying such a move “in the absence of any evidence of a large-scale breach of confidentiality” would “seriously jeopardise” the hundreds of thousands of candidates who “honestly” appeared for the May 5 exam.

The Centre’s affidavit adds: “It is submitted that in any examination, competing rights have been created, so that the interests of a large number of students who have taken the examination without adopting any allegedly unfair means should not be equally compromised.”

In the backdrop of the alleged cases of irregularities including cheating, impersonation and malpractices, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is conducting investigation and has taken over the cases registered in different states, he noted.

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 court asked the senior counsel appearing for Xylem Learning, a coaching institute that helps NEET students.

In her address to a joint session of Parliament, Speaker Draupadi Murmu asserted that the government was committed to conducting a fair investigation and punishing the culprits severely in the cases of document leaks. She said, “We have already witnessed many cases of document leaks in different states. We need to rise above partisan politics and take concrete action at the national level.” The Parliament has also enacted a strict law against unfair means in examinations, she added.

(With inputs from IANS)