NEET affairs get messier, murkier

With fresh reports of widespread malpractices in conducting NEET-UG exam appearing on a daily basis, the role of National Testing Agency is looking murkier and affairs messier.

Contours of a larger scam are getting etched on the national firmament with each such allegation. There appears to be an orchestrated effort behind 67 students getting a perfect 720/720 score. Seven of these were from a single centre in Haryana.

Then the announcement of results on June 4, ten days earlier than it was due, adds a ring of mystery. It leads to the question whether this super efficiency was shown merely to camouflage the bungling and corruption in the conduct of the exams with the hum the general election results evoked.

Allowance of 15 ‘compensatory’ marks for reported delay in commencement of exam to nearly 1,500 students lends a touch of hilarity inasmuch as this must be the first occasion where students appearing for a competitive exam have been awarded ‘grace marks’.

Evidence has also come to light pertaining to organised cheating at an exam centre in Gujarat and crores of rupees changing hands between parents and the coordinator of the exam centre.

Finally, there are allegations of the leaked exam paper going viral on the ‘Telegram’ social media platform prior to commencement of the exam.

All these lend credibility to the charge of integrity and the sanctity of the exam getting compromised. It is apparent that the allegations are of serious nature and go beyond mere discrepancies and anomalies.

While the NTA has conducted a re-exam for those who were granted the grace marks, several questions still beg for an answer.

Even though the Education Minister has accepted moral responsibility for the gaffes, lapses and misconduct, and replaced the Director General of the Agency, it still leaves a vast gap between what the students expect and what it insists on delivering.

 Looking at the vast numbers of candidates i.e., nearly 24 lakh at over five thousand centres, it does not seem practical to revoke the NEET result in toto, invalidate the exam and conduct a reexam. It does not behove the NTA to be indifferent to their expectation of delivering them seats in the medical schools.

Fortunes and labours of millions of students are hinged upon the outcome as parents have invested virtually millions of rupees on coaching their wards and the youth have burnt tons of midnight oil. The irregularities have subverted merit and rewarded the culprits carrying moneybags.

Whatever the NTA might decide to deal with the current situation, it is pertinent to see merit in the demand being made by the Government of Tamil Nadu to scrap NEET and return to the decentralised system of selection of candidates for medical schools under the state dispensation.

Insistence on ‘one nation, one exam’ bears no relevance to the great diversity that exists in academic standards and method of determining admissibility of students. ‘One size fits all’ may be a romanticised idea of integrating the nation.

But the repercussions of the integrity of the exam becoming doubtful due to mess-up in remote quarters, are before the nation. And the cost is not small.