New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to consider a plea seeking directions to the National Board of Examinations (NBE) to reschedule the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)-PG 2024, scheduled for August 11.
Senior attorney Sanjay Hegde presented the petitioners’ case before a bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, arguing that the administration reduced the number of NEET-PG exam centres from 1,200 to 500 due to claims of paper leaks and other irregularities in this year’s NEET-UG exam administration.
Hegde warned of the hazards associated with the normalisation process and stated that the NEET-PG would now be administered in two shifts due to the reduced number of centres.
The bench, which included Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, declined to use its discretionary power and stated that the exam, in which two lakh students are scheduled to appear, cannot be stopped at the request of four petitioners.
As it dismissed the plea, the apex court said: “We will not reschedule or pass any orders. There are 2 lakh students and close to 4 lakh parents who would weep if we touched this matter. At the behest of four to five petitioners, we cannot jeopardise the careers of two lakh students. We will not do it.”
After the petitioners’ attorney, Anas Tanwir, raised the urgent listing request on Thursday, Chief Justice Chandrachud ordered the registrar to set a hearing date for the matter.
The petitioners requested a postponement of the exam on the grounds that the applicants were assigned to cities that would be extremely difficult for them to go to and that they were unaware of the normalisation procedure. To remove any chance of procedural arbitrariness, they also requested information and the release of the algorithm used to normalise the four sets of question papers.
“The examination will be conducted in two batches…One batch of candidates may likely face a more difficult question paper than the other batch. Therefore, it is prayed that the formula for normalisation should be disclosed before the conduct of examinations, thereby ruling out any fear of arbitrariness,” it said.
Further, the plea stated that the allocation of test cities was made on July 31, and the specific centres are scheduled to be declared on August 8. Given such short notice, it has become highly difficult for students to make arrangements for their travel to their specific cities.
“More than two lakh students are scheduled to appear in the examination. The examination is scheduled to be held in 185 test cities, therefore, resulting in the non-availability of train tickets as well as the hiking of airfares due to dynamic pricing, thereby making it almost impossible for a large number of students to reach their test centres,” it added.
On June 22, the Union Health Ministry postponed the NEET-PG, which was scheduled to be held the very next day, in ” the best interests of the students and to maintain the sanctity of the examination process.” Last year, the top court declined to entertain petitions seeking postponement of the NEET-PG 2023 exam.
–IANS
