The Centre on Friday opposed in the Supreme Court the plea to cancel the NEET-UG 2024 examination over paper leak allegations, saying any such decision would jeopardise the careers of lakhs of students across India.

The government also said there is no proof of any large-scale malpractice as is being claimed.

“It is submitted… that in the absence of any proof of any large-scale breach of confidentiality in a pan-India examination, it would not be rational to scrap the entire examination,” the Centre said in an affidavit on Friday.

The Centre submitted this in response to a slew of petitions filed before the apex court by candidates, individuals and organisations seeking cancellation of this year’s NEET amid allegations of paper leaks, award of irrational grace marks and other irregularities.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud will take up the petitions for hearing on Monday when the courts resume after the summer recess.

The Centre said: “The Union of India duly appreciates that the confidentiality of the question papers is the utmost priority in any examination and that if due to some criminality at the behest of some criminal elements, the confidentiality has been breached… the said person must be dealt with sternly and with the full force of law to ensure that they are punished.

“That scrapping the exam in entirety would seriously jeopardise the lakhs of honest candidates who attempted the question paper in 2024,” the Centre said.

It added that the CBI had already taken up a comprehensive probe into the matter relating to the alleged leak of question papers and argued that the examination cannot be cancelled on mere surmises and conjectures of a few persons.

The government assured the court that it would take stern action against any person found responsible for compromising the confidentiality of the examination process and urged the top court to dismiss the plea for cancellation of the entire examination process as sought by the petitioners.

Around 22 lakh students appeared for the NEET for undergraduate medical courses on May 5. The National Testing Agency (NTA) conducted the exams across 4,470 centres in 571 cities in India and
14 abroad.

However, there has been a massive outrage among the aspirants and their families following the unilateral decision of the NTA to award grace marks to certain students on the grounds of “wastage of time” caused because of technical glitches at certain centres.

Some students secured 718 and 719 marks and 67 students scored 720 out of 720 marks, out of which eight students were from the same centre.

Some of the students complained that the NTA also surprisingly chose to announce the results 10 days ahead of the schedule.

Following the outrage over the grace marks, the Centre and the NTA announced that it had decided to cancel the grace marks awarded to 1,563 candidates appearing for the NEET-UG 2024 exams and a retest would be conducted for those candidates.

If the candidates do not wish to appear for the retest, they will be awarded the actual marks obtained by them in the original May 5 exam after deducting the grace marks awarded to them earlier.

The move, however, has not satisfied several candidates, who have demanded the cancellation of the exams and a fresh NEET-UG be conducted again.