Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Education Minister, told PTI that there was no evidence of a paper in the NEET-UG medical entrance exam.
According to PTI, Pradhan said that the accusations of corruption were false and defended the National Testing Authority (NTA) as a ‘credible’ organisation.
He added, according to PTI, that he would respect and abide by the decision of the Supreme Court in the matter to make sure no student is disadvantaged by the situation.
A vacation bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday approved the Centre’s proposal to cancel grace marks given to 1,563 candidates in the NEET-UG exam for admission to MBBS, BDS and other courses, according to PTI.
The Centre also states that an option would be provided for students to take a re-test on June 23, as reported by PTI. If candidates don’t want to take a re-test, then their previous marks will apply minus the grace marks, for the results.
On July 8, the Supreme Court will hear other petitions, including one by the founder of Physics wallah, Alakh Pandey, which address the discrepancies and potential malpractice involved in the granting of grace marks across 6 centres, according to PTI.
His petition comes after a popular sentiment on social media which has been asking for a RE-NEET, so that the exam can be taken by everyone again due to alleged paper leaks and unfair scoring that have decreased trust in the testing process.
In his petition, Pandey, had asked the court to form an independent committee to look into the matter of leaked papers and also asked that the counselling process be entirely halted, as rankings at this stage will be faulty, according to PTI. In an earlier hearing on June 11, the Supreme Court had refused stay the counselling process and will revisit it in the July 8 proceedings.
The NTA had already faced problems when it was revealed that they had misplaced an applicants scores under another candidates ID, apparently due to damage to the OMR sheet, as per PTI.