The Supreme Court has decided against conducting a NEET-UG re-exam, resulting in 4 lakh candidates losing 5 marks each.

This decision will cause a significant reshuffling of ranks. One of the toppers, who scored 720 out of 720 despite choosing the wrong option (which, along with the correct option, was deemed correct by the NTA due to an error in the previous year's NCERT physics book), will see her score drop.

This reduction will lower her rank considerably, making her score insufficient for admission to the MBBS course at AIIMS-Delhi, according to her counsel. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court rejected pleas for a retest for admissions to 1.08 lakh MBBS seats in government and private medical colleges, finding no evidence to prove that the exam paper leak in Hazaribag compromised the results or breached the examination's sanctity and integrity.

This verdict removed the uncertainty surrounding NEET-UG and alleviated the anxiety of those vying for the coveted seats in medical colleges across the country.

However, 4.2 lakh students who received 4 marks despite choosing the wrong option for an atomic theory question will lose 5 marks (4 for the question and 1 negative mark for answering it incorrectly). The Supreme Court accepted the IIT-Delhi expert committee's report, which identified only one correct option.

This decision will cause a significant reshuffling of ranks. One of the toppers, who had scored 720 out of 720 despite picking the wrong option (deemed correct by the NTA due to an error in the previous year's NCERT physics book), will see her score drop to 715.

This drop will lower her rank considerably, making her score insufficient for admission to the MBBS course at AIIMS-Delhi, according to her counsel. After a four-day hearing, Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra issued the order in open court well beyond business hours.

They remarked, "At this stage, there is insufficient material on record to conclude that the examination results were compromised or that there was a systemic breach of the examination's integrity." The bench noted that a detailed judgment would be issued in the coming days and emphasized the need to address the uncertainty faced by the 23.33 lakh students who took NEET-UG 2024.

Counseling for MBBS admissions is set to start on Wednesday. CJI Chandrachud, who issued the order, added, "Given the lack of conclusive evidence at this stage, the data provided by the National Testing Agency (NTA), including city-wise and center-wise results, does not suggest a systemic issue affecting the examination's sanctity."National Testing Agency (NTA) and a comparison of NEET-UG results for the years 2022, 2023, and 2024 do not indicate a systemic leak of the question paper, which would compromise the sanctity of the examination."

"In arriving at the ultimate conclusion, the court is guided by the test of whether it is possible to segregate tainted students from those whose candidature remains untarnished." The court's determination also validated the stance of the NTA and the Center, which asserted that the leak in Hazaribag was a localized incident and did not compromise the exam's integrity.

Therefore, they argued, NEET-UG need not be scrapped. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and CBI Additional Director Krishna informed the court that the investigation so far had found the impact of the question paper leak limited to Hazaribag and Patna, with only 155 candidates benefiting from it. Of these, only two secured more than 570 marks. The bench noted Mehta's argument that the candidature of the 155 candidates had been canceled and that they might be barred from appearing in NEET-UG in the future. The SG also mentioned that the admission of any candidate found to have indulged in malpractice would be revoked.

The bench stated, "If the investigation reveals the involvement of more beneficiaries of the question paper leak, then action shall be pursued against those students found involved in wrongdoing at any stage, regardless of the completion of the counseling process. No student who has engaged in acts of fraud and is a beneficiary of malpractices would be entitled to claim a vested right to admission in the future."

Accepting Mehta’s argument that the leak was localized, given that the test was conducted in 4,750 centers across 571 cities, and that canceling the entire examination would cause serious inconvenience to honest students who had diligently prepared for three to four years, the bench said,

"The court is also mindful that directing a fresh NEET-UG test for the present year would have serious consequences as more than 2 million students took the examination. The bench warned that canceling the exam would disrupt admission schedules for medical courses, create a ripple effect on subsequent medical examinations, adversely affect the future availability of qualified medical professionals, and severely disadvantage students from marginalized groups—SC, ST, OBC, and EWS—who benefit from reserved seats.

They further stated, "For these reasons, we believe that canceling the entire NEET-UG examination is not justified based on the court's established position or the evidence presented."

The bench assured the petitioners, represented by lead counsel Narender Hooda and Sanjay Hegde, that it would independently review the data provided by the NTA. after IIT-Madras, using data analytics, found no abnormal trends in the NEET-UG 2024 results in various centers, including Hazaribag and Patna. The SC noted that individual grievances of candidates, such as improper evaluation of their OMR (answer) sheets, must be raised before jurisdictional high courts after withdrawing their pleas from the apex court.