The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) is the national-level uniform test for admissions to undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses across the country. Since the release of NEET-UG-2024 results last week, the chorus regarding many malpractices related to the conduct of the exam and processing of results has grown exponentially. Even the leaders of opposition parties raised concerns about the exam regarding the alleged malpractices. The parties demanded an enquiry and re-examination. The Supreme Court also raised apprehensions stating that the “‘sanctity of the exam has been affected” and demanded answers in an earlier hearing on June 11. It further issued a notice to the National Testing Agency (NTA) and other respondents on this date. Further new litigations are being filed in court on a daily basis demanding a re-test, and a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry, among others etc.ControversyNEET-UG examination for this academic year was held by NTA on May 5. This exam was held in 571 cities and around 24 lakh candidates have appeared for it. There were media reports that Patna police arrested a gang in relation to the leaking of the question paper before the exam day. Though there were allegations about question paper leak in Patna and few other northern states, the NTA denied all these allegations through a press release claiming that the integrity of the exam was maintained, prior to the declaration of the results. In addition to this, there were multiple FIRs filed related to impersonation and other malpractices as well.The results of this exam were originally scheduled to be declared on June 14. However, on June 4, when the whole country was busy following election results, the NEET UG results were also declared. For the first time in the history of this competitive exam, 67 candidates got rank 1 sharing equal scores. Among the first-rank holders, some of them are found to have taken the exam at the same centre. As the exam marking pattern carries +4 marks for each correct response, and -1 for each incorrect response, some of the students scored 718 and 719 out of a total of 720 marks. This is technically impossible with the NEET exam’s marking system.Also read: Not So Neat After All: What We Know So Far About the NEET-UG ScandalNTA’s responseDue to hashtags trending on social media pointing out these irregularities, a press release was issued by NTA on June 6. The press release stated that few candidates were awarded ‘compensatory marks’ or ‘grace marks’ due to the loss of time in examination centres. The press release also claimed that the compensatory marks were awarded based on the Supreme Court judgement (Writ petition 551 of 2018) given in the year 2018. Due to the awarding of compensatory marks in NEET UG, revised scores of the candidates vary from -20 to 720.Though it was not explicitly mentioned in the press release that the Supreme Court judgement was given for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), media houses have pointed it out. The fact that an SC judgement on CLAT was applied in the current year of the NEET examination has added to the confusion among students and further fuelled protests.One round of CLAT counselling had already been completed prior to the hearing, and therefore the Supreme Court had devised a normalisation formula for awarding grace marks to the students who lost time during the exam without disturbing the ongoing counselling process.However, the NTA applied this normalisation formula for NEET conducted this year when the counselling for NEET hadn’t taken place, like in the case of CLAT. The NTA also didn’t weigh in on other options, including conducting a re-test, for those 1586 students who had apparently suffered a loss of time due to glitches, in its first response.And then as the pressure mounted, the NTA in the last press conference announced that a four-member committee to review the results of around 1,500 students who were given compensatory/grace marks. Based on this committee’s recommendation, NTA has taken a decision to cancel the results of these candidates, and decided to provide one more chance for these candidates to appear in the re-test scheduled to be held on June 23. Though this committee’s recommendation was communicated to the apex court, the committee’s final comprehensive report and the basis on which the committee’s recommendation was made etc are not disclosed by NTA in the public domain.CLAT 2018 was a computer-based online test. The poor management and technical glitches associated with the conduct of this online examination resulted in significant time loss for candidates who appeared in CLAT 2018. In the online examination, the test software can track even loss of seconds.However, NEET is an offline exam in which students record their answers on an OMR sheet. Due to the lack of software capability to track candidate activities in an offline exam, it is not entirely reliable to ascertain the loss of time for each student only based on footage from CCTV cameras.In the CLAT 2018 case, the normalisation formula prescribed by the Supreme Court required finding out the answering efficiency of a candidate, and relating it to the number of additional questions the candidate would have attempted with that answering efficiency, if there was no time loss. Based on this calculation, a revised number of correct and incorrect responses are calculated for each candidate, considering there is no time loss. If this revised number of correct and incorrect responses are in decimals, it is rounded off to the nearest whole number.If the same normalisation formula was used in NEET UG 2024, the revised scores of affected candidates are not calculated directly. Rather, the candidates’ revised number of correct responses and incorrect responses are calculated first, and based on that revised score is awarded. In such a case, the candidate’s score has to be the score which is possible in a real-time scenario. Thus, scores of 719, 718 out of a total score of 720 are not possible in NEET UG even after applying this normalisation formula, which raises significant doubts on the fair processing of results by NTA.In the CLAT 2018 case, a grievance redressal committee with eminent experts was constituted and a dedicated email address was created to lodge candidates’ grievances. This was not the case with the recently conducted NEETDid the government forget its own rules?Earlier this year, the Union government enacted ‘The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act‘ for fair conduct of all public examinations including competitive exams. For unfair means practices, this act offers punishment of imprisonment (at least a term of five years) and a fine of at least one crore rupees.Under Section 3(viii) of this Act, willful violation of the norms or standards set up for the conduct of examination is an unfair means. NEET UG 2024 information bulletin is the sole document which describes the conduct rules, norms, tie-breaking criteria, standards and other relevant standard operating procedures (SoPs) to be followed for conducting this exam. The initial draft information bulletin & revised bulletin don’t have any mention regarding the procedure to award compensatory marks for NEET UG candidates to compensate for time loss/any other grievance.Thus, the decision to award grace marks to candidates is not a norm set up by NTA. If at all NTA is transparent, it should have announced this decision to award grace marks by amending the relevant clauses of the information bulletin for NEET UG 2024 or through a press release when the decision was taken. At least NTA should have clarified regarding award of grace marks, on the date of declaration of NEET UG results. However, no such press release was issued by NTA for two days after the declaration of the results. In fact, just because students have pointed out the impossible scores of 718 and 719, NTA has issued a clarification regarding grace marks.Representative image. Photo: MBBSGuru/Flickr CC BY 2.0This raises suspicion as to whether this is the first time NTA has awarded grace marks, or whether this unfair practice was followed during previous year’s exams as well.How only 1,563 students were selectively awarded grace marks out of all candidates who have lost time during the examination is another question to be addressed. Section 3(v) of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act defines, directly or indirectly assisting any candidate in any manner unauthorisedly in the public examination as an unfair means. Despite claiming to have followed the normalisation procedure and norms established in the CLAT 2018 case, NTA has denied giving additional opportunity to candidates to register their grievances. Here, the exam conducting body NTA has selectively assisted 1,563 candidates without disclosing the norms.Apart from the issue of grace marks, there have been questions about paper leaks as well. There are media reports which state that question papers and partially burnt documents were confiscated by police from those arrested related to the NEET paper leak.As the police investigation is still in progress, the possibility of the question paper having been shared electronically across the country before their arrest cannot be denied completely.In such circumstances, how can the NTA categorically deny allegations of a paper leak already in the joint press conference held on June 8 is a million-dollar question.A fresh allegation of a Godhra-based coaching centre filling the unanswered questions with correct answers in the NEET-UG OMR sheet has also erupted.Now, the Supreme Court has issued a separate notice to the NTA on a plea demanding the CBI inquiry and the NTA has to respond by the next hearing which is slated for July 8.Also read: ‘NTA’s Grace Marks Cancellation a Bait’: Why an Expert Thinks NEET-UG 2024 Is a ‘Rigged’ ExamControversial introduction of NEET and compromise of meritWhen NEET was proposed, experts argued that such a single national-level entrance test for medical courses would uphold merit and improve the quality of education. However, for the past couple of years cut-off for post-graduation (NEET PG) and super speciality courses (NEET SS) was reduced to ‘zero percentile’. Thus, a candidate who has just appeared in the exam and got zero (or) negative marks would be able to get admission into medical PG and super speciality courses. Even in the case of NEET UG, students who scored the minimum qualifying percentile of 110-120 marks can easily get admission to private medical colleges by paying huge sums. This raises significant questions about the actual intent behind the introduction of NEET.Without the introduction of the national-level NEET examination, just ensuring a single-window admission process by the concerned state governments based on their state-level CET scores would have prevented the capitation fee and other unfair practices done by money-minded private medical colleges.Protesters affiliated to SFI, the students’ wing of the Left Front, protest against the NEET-UG exams. Photo: By arrangement.In the year 2021, the Tamil Nadu government constituted a high-level expert committee to study the impacts of NEET. This committee worked under the chairmanship of retired high court judge AK Rajan. This committee observed that after the introduction of NEET for medical admission, the number of first-generation students getting admission to medical colleges has reduced. Further, this committee report states that several state board students who get medical course admission also reduced drastically and NEET poses as a barrier for students from rural & poor socio-economic backgrounds.After pursual of this AK Rajan Committee-related internal documents through an order of the TN State Information Commission, it was noted that a letter addressed on behalf of this committee to the National Testing Agency to provide various socio-demographic profiles of NEET applicants for the years 2017-20 was not even answered by NTA.The real impact of NEET, which has been unconstitutionally pushed down the throat of medical education is that it is anti-poor, anti-minority, anti-federal and anti-constitution, which is covered by The Wire already.The way forwardOur country has witnessed numerous medical admission rackets such as the VYAPAM scam in Madhya Pradesh and the All India Pre-medical Entrance Test (AIPMT) in 2015. In all such admission tests, the exam conducting authority continued to deny malpractice allegations till the judiciary intervened. If NTA had given compensatory marks based on an established procedure without compromising merit, the committee’s recommendation to cancel the results of these candidates further creates doubts about the standards and fairness of the processing of NEET UG results.The NTA has released an FAQ which states that “none of the reports are backed with evidence that may indicate paper leak”. The media houses only have to report a crime based on verifiable facts. Providing evidence against crimes and malpractices is the duty of investigation agencies. It is natural during a criminal investigation process to add additional penal charges over the charges made in the preliminary report. As the investigation in the cases is yet to be completed, NTA owes the responsibility to justify its statements made in FAQ by materialistic evidence through a white paper. Further, NTA’s breach of The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act demands not an internal committee inquiry but warrants a credible external agency’s investigation.Mohamed Khader Meeran is a social activist, and has authored Patients’ Rights in India. He can be contacted at lightoftrichy@aol.com.