New Delhi: NTA has been ordered by the Supreme Court to announce NEET UG 2024 city and centre-wise by 20th July at noon with de-identification of the candidates. This comes at a time when the court is hearing various petitions that seek cancellation of the results, re-opening of the NEET-UG examination held in May and court supervised investigations on alleged cheating.

A bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud observed that if JEE Main has to be re-conducted back, the same has to be on the basis of sufficient material, which could point out that there has been an illegitimate intrusion in the process. The court has slated the next hearing for consideration of these petitions to be on July 22.

While holding the hearing, the bench dared the petitioners’ attorneys to explain concrete evidence for numerous irregularities, including the question paper leakage. Of course, some early signs did indicate that the leakage had seemed confined to areas such as Patna and Hazaribagh, where communities could not report leaks in other areas such as Godhra, Gujarat. The bench is hearing more than forty petitions, including those of NTA, an association seeking to transfer all petitions raising allegations of irregularities to the Supreme Court so that no different High Courts may pass different orders.

The claims in Patna and Hazaribagh pertain to leaked question papers, and in Godhra, candidates are alleged to have been paid a sum of money to fill up the OMR sheets in favour of certain candidates. The bench retorted with doubts about the authenticity of the allegations relative to the leak on the social media platform Telegram, arguing that the motive for such endeavours was more financially driven than anything aimed at undermining the validity of the examination process.

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