The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday sought response of Centre, National Testing Agency (NTA) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on pleas for replacement of NTA with robust, autonomous body to conduct medical exam, news agency PTI reported.
The Supreme Court expressed concern that the NTA had failed to learn from the earlier NEET paper leak, as it sought responses from the Centre, the NTA and the CBI on pleas seeking to replace the testing body with a more robust, autonomous entity to conduct the medical entrance exam.
A bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe directed that copies of the petitions be served on Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and other parties, and asked the NTA to file an affidavit by Thursday detailing compliance with directions issued by the court in 2024.
"It's sad that they have not learnt their lessons. The matter had earlier come to this court. A monitoring committee was constituted, its recommendations were accepted, and we now want the NTA to place on record the steps taken to implement them,” the bench observed.
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The court issued notice on a plea filed by the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) through advocate Tanvi Dubey and said all similar matters would be tagged together. It also directed the Centre-appointed panel led by former ISRO chief K. Radhakrishnan, tasked with overhauling the NTA's functioning, to spell out the steps taken to comply with its recommendations.
FAIMA has urged the court to either restructure or replace the NTA with a robust, autonomous mechanism to conduct NEET-UG, alleging recurring paper leaks amount to a "direct assault" on the rights of over 22.7 lakh students.
The association has further sought the constitution of a high-powered monitoring committee, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and comprising a cybersecurity expert and a forensic scientist, to oversee any re-examination and prevent further breaches.
The NEET-UG exam, conducted by the NTA on May 3 for admissions to medical courses, was cancelled on May 12 amid paper leak allegations, which are currently under investigation by the CBI.
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