New Delhi, May 29: We should not disappoint our youngsters, the Supreme Court on Friday said while stressing that the real problem relating to medical entrance examination NEET-UG would not stop till “actual accountability arises”.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the apex court that the government is seriously concerned about the concerns of the youths and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is personally supervising the situation so that “there is no lacunae”.
Mehta told a bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe that some new mechanisms have been put in place for the NEET-UG retest scheduled for June 21.
“The real problem won’t stop till actual accountability arises,” the bench observed.
The top court was hearing pleas, including the one seeking a direction to replace or restructure the National Testing Agency (NTA), which is responsible for conducting the NEET-UG, with a robust and autonomous body to conduct the medical entrance examination.
The bench said it is “actually very traumatic” if something like this happens, not just for the students, but also for their families.
“Accountability will be effective only when you know on whose shoulders, which individual shoulders, the responsibility lies,” it said.
The top law officer said, “The buck must stop somewhere”.
Mehta said the issue relates to youths and the government is seriously concerned about their concerns.
“Some new mechanisms are also put in place for the June 21 examination. It may not be appropriate to divulge what is there, otherwise the very purpose will be frustrated. It is being monitored at the highest possible executive level,” he said.
“The prime minister personally is supervising this so that there is no lacunae,” Mehta said.
The bench cited the example of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and said there was never a situation like paper leak in the examinations conducted by the commission and the NTA needs to learn from other institutions.
“It is actually very traumatic if something like this happens, not just for the students, but also their families and everybody,” the bench said, adding, “They invest so much of emotion”.
The bench also highlighted the problem that most of the institutions were ad-hoc.
“So much so, that you will have the best of the officers working and everybody will depend on that. It is the phenomenon everywhere in our country,” it said.
“It is not the individual who has the capability, it is the institution which has the capability. That is what you need to prepare,” the bench said.
It noted that pursuant to its May 25 order, Director (Legal) of the NTA has filed an affidavit.
“We will go through your affidavit and we will keep monitoring it for sometime,” the bench said.
It also noted that Dr K Radhakrishnan, who is a former chairman of the ISRO and presently working in honorary capacity as the chairman of the high-powered steering committee on NTA Reforms, has also filed an affidavit indicating the implementation of the recommendations of the committee and the future course of action.
The bench asked the Centre to file an affidavit indicating how and in which manner the process of conduct and conclusion of the examination, year after year, will be done.
It said the Centre would also indicate the method by which an “institutional memory through continuity of human resource, institutional expertise through deployment of specialised personnel and institutional plurality by composition of experts is put in place”.
“The endeavour is to ensure that NTA would have the wherewithal, physical as well as intellectual, to ensure that no incidents such as the 2024 or 2026 examinations occur,” the bench said.
It said the affidavit be filed by the Centre within six weeks and posted the matter for hearing in the second week of July.
During the hearing, the bench asked Radhakrishnan, who was present in the court, how much monitoring of the implementation has happened.
“Also tell us how did this failure occur,” the bench asked, adding, “Despite the monitoring on the basis of the high-powered committee’s recommendation, if this incident has happened, then there is something wrong with the original recommendation because it did not conceive of a situation which would have arisen”.
Radhakrishnan said many of the recommendations were initiated already.
He said in 2025, NEET-UG was conducted “almost satisfactorily” and there were a couple of incidents of power failure in some of the examination centres.
On May 12, the NTA cancelled the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), or NEET, held on May 3 amid allegations of paper leak. A re-examination has been scheduled for June 21.
The paper leak allegations are under investigation by the CBI.
After the questions of NEET-UG were allegedly leaked in 2024, the top court had refused to cancel the test but passed various directions aimed at tackling paper leaks and also a criterion for cancelling public exams.
While hearing the pleas on May 25, the top court observed it’s sad that the NTA has not learnt lessons from the earlier NEET paper leak.
It had sought the response of the Centre, NTA and CBI on pleas for the replacement of the testing agency with a robust and autonomous body to conduct the medical entrance exam.
The top court had issued notice on the pleas, including the one filed by the Federation of All India Medical Association through lawyer Tanvi Dubey.
