Saying that there was no material to indicate that the leak was systemic, the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to cancel the NEET-UG exam over alleged paper leak and malpractices, LiveLaw reported. 

Hearing a clutch of petitions, a bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that ordering a re-examination will lead to serious consequences affecting over 23 lakh students and will lead to disruption of the academic schedule, causing a cascading effect in the coming years.

While acknowledging that there was paper leak in the centres in Hazaribagh and Patna, the court said that there is absence of material on the record to say that the result is vitiated or that there is a systemic breach in the exam’s sanctity.

During the hearings, the Centre and the National Testing Agency had argued that the leak was localised in nature and that the beneficiaries were identifiable. The government also cited a data analytics report prepared by IIT-Madras which showed no abnormalities in the results or indication of any mass malpractice.

Newslaundry had earlier detailed the irregularities as part of its NL Sena project. Read all of them here.

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