Himalaya Harbinger, Rudrapur Bureau
The National Testing Agency (NTA) is likely to inform the apex court that ‘change of exam centre’ is not an option given to candidates. Instead, they can only apply for ‘change of exam city’ — which can still be rejected by the agency. The NTA’s submission will be in response to the court’s query on how many students opted for change in exam centre for appearing in the NEET-UG 2024, News18 has learnt.
The Supreme Court, hearing the petitions on NEET-UG on July 18, had asked NTA to furnish details of candidates who changed exam centres and their respective results thereof in the next hearing in the matter that is scheduled for Monday (July 22).
According to the NTA, candidates can apply for changes or corrections in fields in the application form, including the one for correction of exam city.
Approximately 1.25 lakh applications were received by the NTA overall from across the country for change of fields in the form. The agency, on July 22, will clarify that of these, how many were requests for change of exam city and what were the results of these candidates, News18 has gathered.
In case of Godhra, where there has been an allegation of malpractice, the NTA had told the court during the arguments on July 18 that 34 candidates had applied for change of exam city, of which only 14 applications were accepted for correction. Of these 14 candidates, only one has passed the exam.
The agency has told the court that in Godhra, there were only two exam centres where 1,860 and 654 students gave the exam on May 5 when NEET-UG was conducted across the country.
The agency maintains that in case of Godhra, where an attempt was made to manipulate the OMR sheets of some candidates, it was foiled through prompt action taken by the district administration. It also said that an analysis of the results of candidates from these two centres does not show abnormally high scores which, in case of manipulation, would have been higher than the national average.
The SC is hearing a batch of pleas seeking re-test of NEET-UG this year, which ran into allegations of paper leaks and irregularities at various places. There have been allegations of malpractice from specific centres in Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
The NTA had also told the court that based on security measures taken by it for the conduct of the exam, 153 cases of unfair means have been reported, which were placed before the Unfair Means (UFM) committee, which submitted its recommendations for appropriate action on the same. The committee recommended withholding of the results of 81 candidates and debarment of 54 candidates up to three years.
NEET-UG 2024 was conducted on May 5 at 4,750 centres across 571 cities in which over 23 lakh students had appeared. The results of the test were declared on June 4, upon which there was an uproar of leaks and irregularities in the conduct of the exam.
The SC had on Thursday told the NTA to publish the results of all candidates of NEET-UG while masking their identity, city-wise and centre wise on its website by Saturday noon for transparency.
