The Supreme Court urged the Centre to end recurring lapses in the NEET-UG examination and sought details of its plan to shift the test entirely to a computer-based format. “We cannot let this go on like this,” the Court remarked.
The Supreme Court called upon the Union government to bring an end to the series of errors surrounding the NEET-UG examination, and sought particulars of its plans to move the test entirely to a computer-based format, signalling that it would keep the matter under continuing judicial watch.
A Bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe, hearing the issue of paper leaks in the medical entrance examination, told the Centre that it proposed to monitor the subject very closely and would take it up at regular intervals.
Pressing the government on the mechanics of a transition to online testing, and on the safeguards that would accompany it, the Bench said,
“Please tell us what you are doing to shift completely to an online mode. Please tell us how you will protect data when we shift to computer-based testing…We will see to it that everything is institutionalised.”
The Court’s concern extended beyond the mode of examination to the security architecture that a computer-based system would require an acknowledgement that migrating a national examination online substitutes one category of vulnerability for another, replacing the physical leakage of question papers with risks attaching to data integrity, server security and the custody of digital question banks.
Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that the government was going ten extra miles to address the concerns of students, and sought further time to place a holistic view before the Court.
Recording its dissatisfaction with the recurrence of examination failures, the Bench observed,
“We cannot let this go on like this.”
The matter has been listed for July 27.
The backdrop of protest
The hearing unfolds against sustained student agitation in the national capital. Demonstrators led by the Cockroach Janta Party have been stationed at Jantar Mantar, pressing for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the paper leaks.
The agitation turned confrontational earlier this week when the collective launched its ‘Chalo Sansad’ march towards Parliament. Clashes followed on the streets of Delhi, leaving both demonstrators and police personnel injured. The police deployed tear gas and resorted to a baton charge to disperse the marchers.
The protesters have alleged brutality; the police have maintained that they exercised restraint and acted only to preserve law and order. Both accounts remain contested and are the subject of pending proceedings before the Delhi High Court.
Running alongside has been the case of activist Sonam Wangchuk, who commenced a hunger strike on June 28 in support of the demand for Pradhan’s resignation. On July 18, he was removed from the protest site and taken to Safdarjung Hospital after doctors flagged his deteriorating condition.
His wife, Gitanjali Angmo, thereafter moved the Delhi High Court alleging negligence at the government hospital. Following two days of hearing, a Division Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia permitted his transfer to Medanta Hospital in Gurugram, where he ended his fast on Friday.
Friday’s hearing marks a distinct strand of litigation from the protest-related petitions currently before the Delhi High Court, and it goes to the substance of the grievance rather than to the policing of the demonstrations.
It also follows closely on the executive’s own response. On Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that fast-track courts would be established to secure swift and stringent punishment in paper-leak cases, and the Delhi High Court notified the designation of a special judge at the Rouse Avenue Court Complex the same evening, to try offences under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024.
Taken together, the two developments point at different ends of the same problem. The fast-track court is directed at punishing those responsible once a leak has occurred; the Supreme Court’s line of inquiry on Friday is directed at preventing leaks in the first place, by interrogating the design of the examination system itself.
The Bench’s reference to institutionalising the arrangement suggests it is looking for a durable framework rather than a response calibrated to the present controversy.
The Supreme Court has engaged with the integrity of the NEET-UG examination before. In 2024, a Bench then led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud heard a batch of petitions seeking a retest, in the course of which the Court observed that the compromising of the examination’s sanctity was beyond question, while treating cancellation of the examination as a last resort. It ultimately declined to order a fresh test for the entire cohort.
The present proceedings, by contrast, are less concerned with remedying a single year’s examination than with the architecture that has permitted the failures to recur.