SC to hear plea for release of NEET (PG) question paper, answer key
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court is set to hear on Monday a petition seeking directions to the National Board of Examinations (NBE) to release the question paper and answer key of the NEET (PG) examination.
According to the causelist published on the apex court’s website, a bench of Justices BR Gavai and K Vinod Chandran will hear the matter on February 3.
Last June, a vacation bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath agreed to examine the petition and issued a notice to the NBE, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), and other relevant parties. The bench had directed that a response be filed by July 8, 2024, and allowed the respondents to submit their counter affidavits.
During the initial hearing, the National Testing Agency (NTA) stated that it was not a necessary party in the case and requested to be removed from the list of parties involved. The NTA's counsel clarified that the NEET (PG) exam is conducted by the NBE, not by NTA. Following this, Justice SVN Bhatti indicated that the NTA’s request would be considered and it would be removed from the party list when an order is passed.
The petition, filed directly with the Supreme Court, challenges the “arbitrary actions and decisions” of the NBE regarding the non-release of the NEET-PG 2022 question paper, answer key, and answer sheets. It also objects to the lack of an option to re-evaluate scores, despite allegations of "serious discrepancies" in the scores of candidates who appeared for both the NEET-PG 2021 and NEET-PG 2022 exams.
The petition, filed through advocate Charu Mathur, highlights that NEET-PG is the only major competitive exam in India with such a lack of transparency and unilateral information flow. The plea notes that other prestigious exams, including NEET-UG, IIT-JEE, CMAT, CLAT, and judicial services exams, allow candidates to challenge answer keys.
Furthermore, the information bulletin for NEET-PG 2024, following past trends, prohibits candidates from accessing their answer sheets and denies petitioners the ability to exercise their constitutional right to access their answer sheets, even under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, the petition asserts.
With IANS inputs