The Centre on Friday told the Supreme Court that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "personally supervising" developments linked to the NEET paper leak matter, as the top court underscored that students and their families cannot be disappointed by failures in the examination system.
According to Bar and Bench, hearing petitions related to the alleged NEET-UG paper leak and demands for reforms in the National Testing Agency (NTA), the bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe stressed the emotional and academic toll such incidents have on lakhs of students and their families.
“It's very traumatic if this is happening. We cannot disappoint our students. It is not merely the student, it's the family too… It is so much of emotions, love, time, years of study,” the court observed.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said, “The Hon'ble prime minister is personally supervising this.”
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The court suggested that the NTA work closely with permanent academic and expert institutions to improve examination systems and evolve safeguards against emerging threats, including those linked to artificial intelligence.
The court further remarked that Indian institutions often suffer from “adhocism,” where institutional knowledge fails to carry forward beyond individuals.
Questioning the effectiveness of implementation and monitoring of the HPC recommendations, the bench asked how such an incident could occur despite reforms already being proposed and partially implemented.
K Radhakrishnan, the former chairperson of ISRO who heads the high-powered steering committee to monitor implementation of recommendations on National Testing Agency, told the court that the committee had recommended 60 measures, most of which had already been implemented. He said the 2025 NEET-UG examination was conducted satisfactorily, barring isolated incidents such as power failures at certain centres.
He also informed the court that state governments and district administrations were now being actively involved in securing examination processes, and that new mechanisms had been introduced for the upcoming May 21 re-examination.
However, the bench stressed that reforms would remain ineffective unless individual accountability was clearly fixed.
“The real problem won't stop till actual accountability arises,” the court observed. “Unless you identify the duty holders it will be a diffused obligation.”
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Responding to the court's concerns, Mehta said, “The buck must stop somewhere,” while adding that the government remained deeply concerned about the country's youth.
The solicitor general also submitted that some newly introduced mechanisms for the upcoming examinations could not be publicly disclosed as doing so may compromise their effectiveness.
The Supreme Court was hearing a batch of petitions seeking measures ranging from restructuring or replacing the NTA to shifting NEET entirely to a computer-based examination format.
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