'PM Modi personally supervising so there is no lacunae': Centre tells Supreme Court on NEET paper leak

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told Supreme Court that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is is personally supervising NEET-UG re-examination process so that "there is no lacunae".

On Friday, Mehta told the apex court that the government is concerned regarding the apprehensions of the youth and some new mechanism have been put in place for the retest so that past mistakes are not repeated.

"Some new mechanisms are also put in place for the June 21 examination. It may not be appropriate to divulge what is there, otherwise the very purpose will be frustrated. It is being monitored at the highest possible executive level," he said.

A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe was hearing the matter.

We should not disappoint our youngsters, the Supreme Court said while stressing that the real problem relating to NEET-UG would not stop till "actual accountability arises".

"The real problem won't stop till actual accountability arises," the bench observed.

The top court was hearing pleas, including the one seeking a direction to replace or restructure the National Testing Agency (NTA), which is responsible for conducting the NEET-UG, with a robust and autonomous body to conduct the medical entrance examination.

The bench said it is "actually very traumatic" if something like this happens, not just for the students, but also for their families.

"Accountability will be effective only when you know on whose shoulders, which individual shoulders, the responsibility lies," it said.

The bench cited the example of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and said there was never a situation like paper leak in the examinations conducted by the commission and the NTA needs to learn from other institutions. The top law officer said, "The buck must stop somewhere".

"It is actually very traumatic if something like this happens, not just for the students, but also their families and everybody," the bench said, adding, "They invest so much of emotion".

The bench also highlighted the problem that most of the institutions were ad-hoc.

"So much so, that you will have the best of the officers working and everybody will depend on that. It is the phenomenon everywhere in our country," it said.

"It is not the individual who has the capability, it is the institution which has the capability. That is what you need to prepare," the bench said.

It noted that pursuant to its May 25 order, Director (Legal) of the NTA has filed an affidavit.

"We will go through your affidavit and we will keep monitoring it for sometime," the bench said.

During the hearing, Dr K Radhakrishnan, former ISRO chairman and head of the court-constituted monitoring committee, which had submitted extensive recommendations to strengthen the NEET process following the 2024 paper leak was present.

“How much monitoring of implementation has happened? How has this failure occurred? Despite a high-powered committee, if this incident happened, there is something wrong with the original recommendation or there is no proper implementation,” the bench opined.

Radhakrishnan said that the committee had given 35 long-term and around 60 short-term recommendations, most of which were implemented. He said NEET-PG 2025 was conducted “mostly satisfactorily” barring issues like power outages.

He said that safeguards for the upcoming re-NEET had been strengthened in response to the latest vulnerabilities. The bench also sought to know whether the committee met regularly and probed if it had anticipated the specific failures now being reported.

(with PTI inputs)