The Supreme Court on Monday asked the IIT Delhi director to constitute a three-member expert committee to give their opinion on the ambiguous physics question that led to the award of grace marks in NEET-UG 2024. 

A bench comprising CJI DY Chandrachud comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was hearing a batch of cases seeking to cancel the exam.

This came towards the end of the hearing when a petitioner who scored 711 marks told the court that she could not attempt the question because there was negative marking and the question had “ambiguous” options. The CJI said this is a “powerful” argument and asked the NTA how it came to the conclusion to give marks to both options. 

The court also verbally observed that the investigation by the Bihar police indicated that the leak had happened before May 4. The court pointed to the initial statements of the accused arrested by the Bihar police.

The bench posed five primary questions for the Centre and the NTA. It asked how many centres were Canara Bank papers distributed at, and in how many of those centres were the correct question booklets replaced. It asked how many centres saw the papers evaluated for Canara bank papers, and how candidates assessed so had performed. It asked who issued the letter of authorisation for the collection of question papers.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and NTA counsel’s Naresh Kaushik agreed to respond to these queries by tomorrow.

The CJI reiterated the main concern of the court- evidence demonstrating that the leak had spread nationwide, rather than being limited to specific locations like Hazaribag, Patna, and Bahadurgarh.

The court will hear the matter again on Tuesday.

Newslaundry had earlier reported on the ‘confusion’ that led to both the question papers being distributed in Jhajjar. It also reported on the arrests in Bihar, and the alleged role of the paper leak mafia. Read all the reports under our NL Sena on NEET irregularities here.

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