An interim order in favour of the NDA government and NTA came on July 31st in the form of an interim verdict, to be supported by the detailed and reasoning order shortly. Both came under severe pressure and public-outcry on the roads and in the Parliament over immoral increases in malpractices like leakages, frauds and impersonations in the much prestigious test conducted on 5th May.

New Delhi: An RTI activist has also brought out detailed data about the workforce structure of private education in India which will summarily be of considerable interest to those studying this sector while analysing the implications of an apex court judgement in which it declined the reconsideration of NEET-UG 2024 and the re-examination sought by the unsuccessful candidates. Thus, the Court decided that there were no explicit signs of a rampantly compromised confidentiality of the exam.

The preliminary ruling put on confidence the NDA government and the National Testing Agency (NTA) which came under scathing attack and demonstrations over alleged mass-cheating including question-paper leaks, forgery, and impersonation, in the coveted examination conducted on May 5.

About 23 lakh, 24 thousand students appeared in the NEET-UG held in 2024 for admission in MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, and other related fields.

A three-judge bench of DY Chandrachud CJ and JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra JJ concluded the hearing on Thursday. They heard submissions from senior counsel of the field including solicitor Tushar Mehta appearing for the Centre and the NTA, senior advocate, Narender Hooda, Sanjay Hegde and Mathews Nedumapra.

Instead of reserving the verdict, the bench reassembled around 4:50 p.m. and started dictating the order. "In such cases, the court must record its final conclusions promptly to ensure certainty and resolve the dispute affecting over 2 million students," the bench stated.

Referring to its independent scrutiny of the data presented by the NTA and others, the CJI stated, "At the present stage, there is an absence of material on record to conclude that the exam results are vitiated or that there is a systemic breach of the exam's sanctity."

The data on record does not indicate a systemic leak of the question paper that would disrupt the exam's sanctity, the bench added.

The bench explained that ordering a fresh test would have serious consequences for over 24 lakh students who appeared in the examination. Such an order would disrupt the admission schedule, create cascading effects on medical education, impact the availability of qualified medical professionals in the future, and disadvantage marginalized groups for whom reservation was made in seat allocation.

The bench declared that cancelling the entire exam was not justified according to the "settled principles established by this court based on the material on record."

The bench observed that for cancelling the exam, the wrongdoing should be widespread and systemic, breaching the sanctity of the entire test.

The bench rejected the petitioners' lawyers' argument that the leak was systemic and, coupled with structural deficiencies, left the court with no option but to order a re-test.

However, the court acknowledged that the question paper leak in Hazaribagh and Patna was "not in dispute," and referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation's status report, which indicated that "155 students from the exam centers at Hazaribagh and Patna appeared to be the beneficiaries of the fraud."

Since the tainted students could be distinguished from the untainted ones, the petitioners' argument for a re-test held no force, the court stated. If a CBI probe reveals more beneficiaries, suitable action can be taken against those students.

"No student involved in this fraud or found to be a beneficiary would be entitled to claim any vested right in continuation of admission," the court said.

On the issue of a controversial physics question asked in the examination, the bench accepted the IIT Delhi experts' report, which indicated only one correct answer, contrary to some lawyers' allegations of two correct answers.

"Based on the experts' determination, we have no doubt about the correct option... we accept the IIT Delhi report. Therefore, the NTA shall re-tally the NEET UG result, considering option 4 as the only correct answer to the question," the court stated. The IIT Delhi report confirmed that only one option—"atoms are electrically neutral as they contain equal numbers of positive and negative charges"—was correct.

The court also upheld the NTA's decision to conduct a re-test for 1,563 students due to loss of time, change of question paper set, and language issues.

The bench allowed candidates with personal grievances to move their respective high courts after withdrawing their pleas from the apex court.

"The principal issue before us is the exam's sanctity and whether a fresh re-test is needed. We clarify that if any student has an individual grievance not addressed in this judgment, they can approach the competent jurisdictional high courts," the court said.

Doubts about the exam's sanctity arose when 67 students scored a perfect 720, unprecedented in the NTA's history, with six students from a Haryana center figuring in the list.

After the NTA announced the revised results on July 1, the number of candidates sharing the top rank dropped from 67 to 61.