NEET PG | 'Won't Order Fresh Counselling' : Supreme Court On Plea For Answer Keys & Question Papers Of NEET-PG 2024 Exam

The Supreme Court is set to hear a writ petition seeking measures to ensure increased transparency in NEET-PG Exams, including publication of answer keys.

Before a bench of Justices BR Gavai and AG Masih, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde made an urgent mention in respect of the third round of counselling in the NEET-PG exam and sought that the matter be heard soon.

The counsel for the respondent informed the Court that the counselling for the 3rd ground had already commenced and in fact has ended on January 4. 

Justice Gavai stated the Court won't be able to hear the matter today as they are already in the middle of hearing another matter and asked the counsel to mention the matter tomorrow.

He said: "Just ask someone to mention the matter tomorrow. If counselling is over, we will dispose of the matter. It's not like we will order fresh counselling."

In the main writ petition, the petitioners have sought disclosure of answer keys and question papers of the NEET-PG 2024 exam along with other measures to ensure increased transparency.

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."

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