NEET-UG 2024 | Exam Cancellation Only When Malpractice Is Systemic & Separation Of Untainted Candidates Is Impossible: Supreme Court

While refusing to cancel the NEET-UG exam held on May 5 this year on account of paper leak and malpractices, the Supreme Court has observed that an exam may be cancelled only when its sanctity is found to have been compromised at a systemic level and it is impossible to separate the tainted candidates from the untainted ones.

"...the cancellation of an examination, either for the purposes of gaining admission into professional and other courses or for the purpose of recruitment to a government post, is justified only in cases where the sanctity of the exam is found to be compromised at a systemic level. Courts may direct the cancellation of an examination or approve such cancellation by the competent authority only if it is not possible to separate the tainted candidates from the untainted ones", said the bench of CJI DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala, Manoj Misra.

The Court explained that such analysis is necessary to ascertain whether cancelling the exam and conducting a fresh one would be a proportionate response. "This is also why courts are required to assess the extent of the use of unfair means and separately, consider whether it is possible to separate tainted and untainted candidates. A holistic view must be taken", it said.

Elucidating the legal position, the Court also illustrated some factors which shall be relevant to the analysis, that is, whether an exam - be it for admission into professional courses or for recruitment to a government post - ought to be cancelled. The same are as under:

(i) whether a fresh examination would be proportionate to the nature of grievance and the extent to which the integrity of the conducted exam was vitiated;

(ii) what is the number or proportion of students who can be believed to have indulged in malpractice;

(iii) whether it is possible to separate the candidates who indulged in malpractice from those who did not; and

(iv) whether the allegations of malpractice are substantiated and the material on record, including investigative reports, points to that conclusion.

Insofar as the requirement of material that corroborates occurrence of malpractice, the court said that the standard need not be unduly strict. There must be a real possibility of systemic malaise on record, corroborated by sufficient material; however, the material need not point to one and only conclusion that malpractice has taken place at a systemic level.

In facts of the present case, various aspects were considered by the Court, such as - the inflation of marks and ranks, the leak of the question paper, other forms of malpractice, the reopening of the registration window, the change of city when the form was opened for corrections, and the award of compensatory marks to 1563 students.

After going through the material placed on record, it was concluded that there was nothing to indicate that the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak took place at a systemic level. Further, it was opined that it was not possible to separate the untainted candidates from the tainted ones, and as such, the exam could not be cancelled.

"The material on record does not, at present, substantiate the allegation that there has been a widespread malpractice which compromised the integrity of the exam. To the contrary, an assessment of the data indicates that there are no deviations which indicate that systemic cheating has taken place. The information before us at this stage does not show that the question paper was disseminated widely using social media or the internet, or that the answers were being communicated to students using sophisticated electronic means which may prove difficult to trace. The students who were beneficiaries of the leak at Hazaribagh and Patna are capable of being identified. The CBI investigation reveals the number of students who are the beneficiaries of the malpractice at Hazaribagh and Patna at this stage. This leads us to conclude that it is possible to separate the beneficiaries of malpractice or fraud from the honest students. This being the case, the Court cannot direct a re-exam."

Case Details: Vanshika Yadav v. Union of India and Ors., W.P.(C) No. 335/2024 (and connected matters)

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 539

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