'Infructuous' : Supreme Court Dismisses Petitions Alleging Discrepancies In NEET-PG 2022 Scores

The Supreme Court today (June 11) dismissed the petitions challenging the alleged discrepancies and seeking disclosure of answer keys and answer sheets of the NEET-PG 2022 Exam.   

The vacation bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah dismissed the petitions considering them to be infructuous after the lapse of considerable time.

"These petitions are rendered infructuous due to the passage of time. In case the petitioners still have a grievance with respect to the NEET examination of Undergraduate or Post-Graduate held in the year 2024, they may assail it on admissible grounds. These petitions are accordingly dismissed."  

Advocate Avani Bansal appearing for 6 writ petitioners contended that the present petitions would still be of relevance since two of the petitioners would be sitting for the NEET PG 2024 examination which will be held on June 23.  

"The trouble is they(National Board of Examination) are not allowing us access to answer keys, answer sheets, question papers(of NEET-PG 2022) ....the petitioners are still going to appear this time," Bansal submitted.

Disinclined to entertain the matter, the bench dismissed the petitions remarking that " we cannot keep all these matters pending unnecessarily." 

The petition has been filed by doctors whose grievance is that though there are serious mismatches in their NEET-PG 2022 scores, the NBE is not granting re-evaluation.

As per the reliefs sought, the petitioners pray that (a) directions be issued to NBE to release the question paper and answer key for NEET-PG 2022;  (b) provide options to the candidates to re-evaluate their papers; to declare Clause 9.7 and 10.4 unconstitutional; (c) permit candidates to challenge answer keys.

The petitioners also sought the constitution of a High Power Committee to examine instances of alleged discrepancies in scores to ensure fairness and transparency in the evaluation mechanism. The petition implores to frame guidelines for publishing question papers and answer keys after the examination. They sought direction to NBE to upload individual OMR answer sheets in the login account along with the question paper and the corresponding answer key, immediately after the examination and to provide the answer key and question paper to the candidates for NEET-PG 2022, upon their filing a RTI application. 

In August 2022 the Top Court refused to stay the Counseling process for NEET-PG 2022. 

The petitioners submitted that other prestigious examinations in India including NEET-UG provide an option to the candidates to challenge the answer keys. Citing CBSE And Anr. v. Aditya Bandhopadhyay And Ors. the petition argued that answer sheets being information under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act, 2005. However, the NBE is not exempted from providing information under Section 24 of the RTI Act.

The petition specifically assails Clauses 9.7 and 10.4 of the NEET-PG Information Bulletin which states that the contents of the exam are proprietary of NBE and no re-evaluation, re-checking or re-totaling is permitted. Conduct of exam, the petition avers, does not constitute a private activity, checking and evaluation of answer sheets by an examiner and the marks assigned by them have nothing to do with issue of privacy and thus NBE would not attract Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. 

Case Details : Pritish Kumar v NBE] W.P.(C) No. 591/2022

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