NEET-UG 2024: Several rankers lose AIR 1, only 17 toppers in the final results

After all the commotion surrounding NEET-UG 2024 examination, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has finally announced the revised results with the grace marks removed, leaving only 17 toppers as opposed to 67 in the original result announced on June 4.

The revised results of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2024 were announced on July 26 in accordance with the instruction by the Supreme Court of India.

The result is strictly based on the marks obtained by the candidates, removing all the compensatory marks awarded earlier.

The previous 67 candidates getting AIR 1 had initially drawn the attention to the alleged discrepancies in the exam. Out of 67, six of them were reduced earlier, after the NTA announced the removal of grace marks that were awarded to students owing to time loss. In 2023, only 2 candidates got AIR 1 with a perfect 720 score.

The controversy began when Shivangi Mishra, one of the candidates, and three others filed a petition in the court for the cancelation and re-examination due to the suspected paper leaks and anomalies in grace mark allocation. The result was declared on June 4 with 67 candidates scoring a perfect 720 marks, which raised the question of misconduct in the examination, prompting various protests nationwide.

The NEET-UG 2024 raised many allegations of paper leaks in Bihar and Jharkhand, including a case from Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan, where English-medium papers were distributed to Hindi-medium candidates. Even Haryana was surrounded with controversy for the exceptional result, where six toppers out of 67 achieved a perfect score of 720 and were from a single Haryana center.

Another complaint was from Gujarat's Godhra town, where police detained five individuals for allegedly conspiring to help at least 30 students cheat in the exam, and the accused charged each student ₹10 lakh to solve the exam paper.

The plan was to choose a specific center to write the exam for candidates and leave their OMR sheet blank during the examination. Later, one of the defendants, who worked as an exam center official, would fill in the blank OMR sheets with correct answers.

Following this, 38 new petitions were filed throughout the nation seeking cancelation and re-examination. The Supreme Court started hearing the petitions along with the petition filed by 50 successful Gujarat candidates demanding not to cancel the exam on July 8.

As protests intensified across the country , the NTA and government removed the grace marks given to 1,563 candidates with an option to either take the re-examination or go with the original scores. Out of those 1,563 students, only 813 applicants showed up for the retest.

As the allegations surrounding NEET-UG 2024 grew and questions raised on the working of NTA, a committee headed by former ISRO Chairman Dr. K Radhakrishnan was set up to do the thorough examination of the agency.

In the first hearing on July 8, a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud, along with Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, acknowledged the paper leak, saying, “It is an admitted fact that there is a leak. The nature of the leak is what we are considering. The leak cannot be disputed. The consequences of it are what we are considering.”

But on the third and last hearing, SC denied the demand of cancelation and re-examination of the NEET, citing a lack of evidence to support a "systemic breach" or that the "sanctity" of the test had been compromised in light of two localized question paper leaks.

The bench said that there would be "big consequences" if 23.33 lakh prospective medical students were ordered to retake the exam. Many of them would have to travel hundreds of kilometers from their hometowns to the exam centers.

The final verdict disappointed many students as well as states, with many candidates losing faith in NTA and government, whereas several states and universities decided to revert to their original in-house entrance examination system.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has also demanded the abolition of the NEET exam and resumption of the "old system" of medical admissions in UP. West Bengal has already passed a motion to do away with the exam, as has Karnataka. Tamil Nadu is about to do the same. But the central government is in no mood to change anything yet.

The Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, expressing his joy and slamming the opposition on July 23, said, “After this historic judgment of the Supreme Court, I would like to say Satyameva Jayate. When the NEET matter came to light, the opposition's role became clear after the Supreme Court's judgment today. The attitude that the Lok Sabha LoP had adopted until yesterday, invalidating the examination system of the country and calling it rubbish, proves his mental status.”

The investigation of the paper leak is still ongoing. The CBI, on July 25, unraveled the sequence of events leading up to the paper leak of the NEET-UG 2024 exam in Jharkhand's Hazaribagh center, accusing the principal and vice principal of a top school in the city of involvement in the scam that caused a nationwide outrage.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also confirmed that they have conducted searches in 33 locations so far, and 36 people have been detained till now, including 15 by Bihar Police and seven members of the solver gang.

The controversy around NEET-UG 2024 administered by NTA affected many other national examinations conducted by the exam body. The National Eligibility Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) exam 2024 was postponed by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Due to suspicions of a paper leak, the University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) 2024 exam was also canceled on June 19, the day after it took place.

The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test (CSIR UGC-NET) has also been postponed. The new dates of the examinations have been released by the NTA.

The final result has reshuffled the ranking of the NEET candidates. Presently, India has 695 medical colleges. In total, these colleges offer admission to 1,06,333 medical seats.

A student's rank is directly proportional to their scores, with greater scores typically indicating higher ranks. This is especially significant for individuals hoping to get into a prestigious medical college.

The NEET-UG exam is not only for admission to the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program but also admits students to the Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS), Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS), Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery (BUMS), Bachelor of Siddha Medicine and Surgery (BSMS), Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery (BHMS), MNS (Military Nursing Service), and the four-year BSc Nursing program.