India: No 'mass malpractice' in 2024 NEET-UG exam, government tells Supreme Court

In an affidavit submitted to the Indian Supreme Court on Wednesday (July 10), the central government stated that there was no "mass malpractice" in the 2024 NEET-UG examination.

The Centre claims that an analysis of the data carried out by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras shows no proof of widespread misconduct or any kind of unfair advantage for a certain set of candidates, which may lead to unusual scores.

Counselling will begin in four rounds in the third week of July, the government said. It added that any applicant who is discovered to have benefitted from malpractice will have their candidacy terminated at any time during or after the counselling process.

"The marks distribution follows the bell-shaped curve that is witnessed in any large-scale examination indicating no abnormality," the IIT Madras report said.

"City-wise and center-wise analysis was done for 2 years (2023 and 2024) to find out if there are any abnormal indications. The Analysis is carried out for the Top 1.4 lakh ranks given that the total number of seats across the country is around 1.1 lakhs," it added.

"The analysis shows that there is neither any indication of mass malpractice nor a localised set of candidates being benefitted leading to abnormal scores," the report said.

"There is an overall increase in the marks obtained by students, specifically in the range of 550 to 720. This increase is seen across the cities and centres. This is attributed to a 25% reduction in syllabus. In addition, candidates obtaining such high marks are spread across multiple cities and multiple centres, indicating very less likelihood of malpractice," it further added.

On Monday (Jul 8), the Supreme Court reviewed multiple petitions concerning the contentious NEET-UG 2024 medical entrance exam. The petitions included allegations of paper leakage and other malpractices during the May 5 test, with calls for the exam to be conducted anew.

The apex court had requested reports from the NTA and the Centre detailing the steps taken as well as any potential ideas on using data analytics in the cyber forensics unit or any other government-employed unit to find suspect cases.