Neet Scam 2024

The National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2024 scam refers to an Indian controversial debate that sparked between netizens and medical candidates regarding multiple discrepancies that occurred in the conduction of the NEET-UG 2024 examination. The examination is one of India's biggest entrance examination in terms of applicant numbers and is the sole nationwide examination conducted for admission in all Indian government and private MBBS undergraduate programs.

This Result declaration sparked nationwide outrage from students and citizens alike because of various discrepancies and multiple top scorers being awarded 'impossible' scores and an unprecedented rise in the number of candidates scoring full marks. The pre-medical test received a plethora of allegations citing use of unfair means and a suspected paper leak, with many highly unsatisfied candidates asking for re-examination.

Background

The NEET-UG is a single phase competetive standarised examination held by the autonomous government run NTA in pen and paper mode in over 13 languages. The examination is conducted for admissions into all MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, BAMS, BYNS, BUMS, BSMS, BHMS, BVSc and AH, and some nursing courses, in government and private colleges in the country.

The NEET-UG examination is the sole entrance examination held for admission into all MBBS and BDS courses in the country. The country hold no other medical entrance examinations nor allows admission into medical colleges through any other criteria. There are currently 695 medical colleges in India, offering a total of 1,06,333 seats for medical courses. Out of these, Approx. 55,648 seats are in government colleges, and 50,685. The fees for private colleges have skyrocketed in recent years with some demanding fees as high as 2 crores for the entire 5.5 year MBBS-UG course.

In 2024 around 23.5 lakh or 2.4 million aspirants appeared for the examination on May 5, 2024 across various states in India. This number of aspirants saw an increase in around 3 lakh applicant which came in line with the general trend of the increase in applicant numbers.

Incident

A paper scam in Gujarat, featured Vadodara based international education consultant owners and educators, and at least 16 students who paid Rs 10 lakh apiece to pass the exam. The prosecution informed a Godhra court that at least 16 students from Odisha, Jharkhand, and Karnataka had agreed to pay Rs 10 lakh apiece to clear the NEET. The pupils' identities were discovered on the list retrieved from primary accused Tushar Bhatt. On the allegations in the FIR, the accused instructed them to submit blank papers with answers to be filled after the exam.

Fresh accusations arose when news reports of a thriving paper leak group emerged only days after conduction of the competitive exam. Buyers reportedly charged prices ranging from 20 to 25 lakhs Indian Rupees, (around 2-2.5 million USD) for the examination papers at Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan Mehta Vidyalaya. Also, at one centre in Rajasthan, named Girls Higher Secondary Adarsh Vidya Mandir, Mantown, Sawai Madhopur, the Hindi medium students claimed that they were handed English medium question papers, instead of Hindi ones.

Result Scrutiny

The suspicions regarding a paper leak only increased with the NEET results declared 10 days prior to its' initial release date published on the NTA's information bulletin which is an unprecedented pre-ponement. The hasty declaration of the result created speculations of a deliberate attempt to quash any revolt, as this coincided with the date of the much media covered Indian Lok Sabha Election Results. The NEET-UG scores were also released by the NTA only hours after the release of its official Answer Key, raising further doubts

In a merit list released by the NTA, it was revealed that a stagerring 67 candidates scored a percentile of 99.997129, all bagging All India Ranks of 1, making a steep rise in rank inflation for all aspirants. Although all 67 of these students are ranked first, the NTA has revealed their All-India Counselling Rank in decimal points. The NTA has not given a proper explanation on how these counselling ranks were divided among the 67 AIR 1 holders, raising concerns about the fairness of NEET UG 2024.

The merit list also revealed that eight candidates who received the same top rank with a perfect score of 720/720, came from a single exam center located in Jhajjar, Haryana.

One aspirant received a rank of 1.54, which is almost impossible, substantially raising stakes . In addition to the controversy, students were stumped to find two answers to one question in the question paper. A wrong answer was based on an incorrect explanation in the older versions of the NCERT (National Council of Education Training and Research) textbooks. This decision saw 44 candidates have their scores boosted from 715 to a perfect 720, thereby adding their names to the NEET UG 2024 Toppers list.

Furthermore, the results of other candidates surprised netizens when they viewed a scorecard with the results of 718/720 and 719/720, which were mathematically impossible scores according to the official NEET marking scheme, which function in a (+4,-1) format. To these allegations the National Testing Agency replied with an incomplete clarification of awarding grace marks to the candidates, not mentioning the exact number or percentage awarded.

Media reactions and public uproar

Following the announcement of the exam results, social media channels and media platform X (formerly Twitter) were flooded with hashtags such as "#NEETfraud" and "#neetscam2024," calling for an investigation into the examination process and urging re-examination.

However most news reports covering the discrepancies didn't emerge until two days later and the campaign against NTA's unfair conduct was partially overshadowed by the coverage of election results.

Several public educators and educational technology companies raised media debates and questioned the authenticity of the exam. Indian political party leaders alleged rigging and corruption and demanded probes into the exam process, one involving Congress Party Leader Priyanka Gandhi questioning the goverment for ignoring student complaints.

Madhya Pradesh Congress Media Department President Mukesh Nayak alleged in a press conference that the National Testing Agency (NTA) has committed a bigger scam than Vyapam and made demands for a CBI probe.

NTA's response

In response to the paper leak allegations in various centres before commencement of the exam, NTA issued a public notice citing them to be "completely baseless and without any ground"

The NTA released no comments on the impossible marks either before or soonafter the result declaration. The NTA issued an official clarification notice dated 6 June 2024 on the significant problems surrounding the matter and refuted suspicions of a paper leak and justified the early results declaration, claiming it was not timed to coincide with the Lok Sabha elections: "NTA received few representations and Court Cases from the candidates of NEET (UG) 2024 raising concerns of loss of time during the conduct of the examination on 05.05.2024. Such cases/representations were considered by NTA and the normalization formula, which has been devised and adopted by the Hon'ble Apex Court, vide its Judgment dated 13.06.2018, was implemented to address the loss of time faced by the candidates of NEET (UG) 2024."

The NTA also notified that 1,563 candidates were given grace marks, and the revised marks of such candidates vary from 20 to 720 marks. Students raised concerns over not being notified of the grace mark formulation in the examination brochures or the criteria of allotment of these grace mark.

The National Testing Agency has also not yet clarified whether the grace mark criteria has been used before 2024 in NEET-UG or in any other examinations conducted by it since the judgement in 2018.

The NTA's veiled responses and opaque proceddings only resulted in further anger and questioning from students and media outlets, hailing the entire procedure a scam.

Legal proceedings and investigation

Multiple applications have been filed with the Supreme Court of India asking a re-examination in light of the allegations, including a writ petition, demanding that the NEET UG 2024 test be re-conducted due to claims of question paper leaking and irregularities in NEET results. The petition, which was filed by Shivangi Mishra and others, named the NTA as a party and expressed concerns about paper leaks and the sanctity of the test while demanding a directive to hold a second examination. Despite this, the Supreme Court denied the petition to suspend the publishing of NEET UG test results. The purported NEET paper leak violated Article 14 (right to equality) of the Indian Constitution by giving certain candidates an unfair advantage over others who opted to take the exam in a fair way.

Moreover, a petition filed by a NEET UG candidate at Delhi High Court demanded answers from NTA. The petition has said the principle of fairness in a competitive examination mandate that all candidates should be evaluated on an equal footing and alleged that the authorities compromised the fairness by awarding marks to two correct options when the instructions had clearly indicated that only one option was correct.

Additionally, a public interest litigation (PIL) questioning the reason behind the odd marks of 718/720 and 719/720, has been raised at the Calcutta High Court. With reference to a paper leak case in Bihar, a PIL filed demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation into the matter.

On June 8, 2024, at a press conference, the NTA declared the decision from the Education Ministry to set up a four-member panel to reanalyze the supposedly awarded grace marks to 1563 candidates.