The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the National Testing Agency to publish the marks obtained by NEET-UG candidates centre-wise and city-wise by noon of July 20.

However, on a plea from the Centre to protect the students’ privacy, the bench orally observed that the NTA can mask the identity of the candidates by releasing dummy roll
numbers.

The NEET-UG — the undergraduate medical entrance exam — has been vitiated by allegations of paper leaks together with a very high number of candidates securing
full marks, most of them purportedly from certain specific centres.

The exam was held across 571 cities and 4,750 centres on May 5, with about 23 lakh students vying for some 1.08 lakh MBBS seats at government and private colleges.

The apex court directed the Bihar police and their economic offences wing — who had initially handled the probe before it was transferred to the CBI — to furnish their investigation reports by 5pm of July 20.

The bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra passed the directions after a daylong but inconclusive hearing and posted the matter to July 22.

During Thursday’s hearing, the bench orally observed that the paper leak was prima facie confined to Hazaribagh and Patna in Bihar, and therefore a retest — as sought by several candidates — may not be necessary.

However, it added that it would examine various investigation reports and the arguments advanced by the counsels for the students before passing any order on a retest.

“We cannot order a re-exam merely because they want to appear,” Justice Chandrachud had earlier told senior advocate Narender Hooda, who was representing some of the student petitioners, during the arguments.

Hood said it was difficult to separate the tainted students from the rest as there were 23 lakh aspirants.

Justice Chandrachud agreed that if it became difficult to separate the tainted students from the rest, then “the entire exam has to go”.

Hooda said a trunk carrying NEET-UG question papers was found being ferried in an open e-rickshaw to Oasis School in Hazaribagh. He said the CBI later arrested the school principal but the government was silent on the matter in its statement. Hooda contended that the principal was also the NTA coordinator.

He alleged that leaked papers were circulating on social media since May 4, a day before the exam.

Solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, and NTA counsel Naresh Kaushik countered that the documents purportedly circulated on social media platforms like Telegram were “doctored” ones.

Mehta said the purported leak happened at 8.02am on May 5, the day of the exam, and the maximum number of students who could have benefited was only 150.

Thirty-eight petitions are pending before the apex court relating to the alleged irregularities.