NEET-PG 2024| Supreme Court Seeks NBE's Response On Petition Seeking Disclosure Of Answer Keys

The Supreme Court today (September 13) sought response from the National Board of Education (NBE) in a writ petition seeking disclosure of answer keys and question papers ofthe NEET-PG 2024 exam along with other measures to ensure increased transparency 

Senior Advocate Vibha Makhija appearing for the petitioner stressed that the NBE has not released either the question papers or the answer keys. She added that without knowing the correct answers, the candidates will not be able to assess their performances in a transparent way. She submitted thatwhen the scorecard was released, it did not tally accurately for many candidates.

She added that the Information Bulletin Clause 10.4 states that there will be no provision for re-evaluation or rechecking or re-totaling of responses.  

The NEET-PG 2024 Exas was conducted on August 11 by the NBE, the results of which were declared on August 23 with the counselling commencing on September 20.  

The bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra agreed to consider the matter and passed the following order : 

" Serve the NBE, we will list it next Friday, liberty to serve standing counsel" 

"Serve a copy of the petition, we will ask for some assistance from the other side," the CJI added further.

The petitioners have raised issues of lack of transparency and arbitrary last-minute changes in the conduct of the 2024 Exam. 

The plea states that the exam format was changed just one month before the scheduled date and the exam was converted into a two (2) session examination with separate papers for each session which is against NBE's guidelines of having one common examination. 

The plea elaborated on the issue of non-disclosure of exam question-answers : 

"There is a clear lack of transparency in conduct of examinations of NEET PG 2024 since none of the documents which can allow a student to check his/her performance are supplied by the Respondents i.e. neither the (a) question paper, nor (b) the Response sheet filled in by candidates, nor (c) Answer Key is supplied to the students, and merely a score card has been provided along with list of attempted correctly/attempted wrongly sections. The students on perusal of the score cards have found discrepancy in the total number of questions that they attempted which are found to be different than what is stated in the score cards issued to them. Thus, there is a basic flaw in the conduct of the examinations which goes to the root of the matter. However, there is no redressal of the above, and an unfettered power has been vested in the Respondents to conduct examinations, without the necessary checks and balances." 

Grievance has also been raised against the new marks normalisation method. 

"A new procedure for normalization of scores (based on a system applied in AIIMS which has a different kind of paper) was introduced by the Respondents for calculation of scores obtained by candidates in Session 1 and session 2 and for tie breaking it would be counted to the 7th decimal, which is completely arbitrary as two classes of candidates have been created without any reasonable nexus with object being sought to be achieved i.e. getting the best suited candidates their opted specializations." 

"The normalisation procedure has completely altered the ranks that students expected to obtain based on their performance in the examination and it has led to clumping of students at each decimal, which would not have happened in case of counting of actual marks. Thus, the specialities will be exhausted on account of some superficial criteria prescribed by the Respondents, which is not reflective of the best candidates available."  

The matter will now be heard on September 20. 

Case Details : ISHIKA JAIN AND ORS. Versus NATIONAL BOARD OF EXAMINATION AND ORS. W.P.(C) No. 583/2024