📷 Image Credits: The Hindu
The Supreme Court on July 15 sought responses from students-petitioners to a request made by the National Testing Agency [NTA], which is under a cloud over the conduct of NEET-UG 2024 marred by leaks and other irregularities, to transfer their pleas pending in High Courts to the Supreme Court. A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud issued notice to the students, who are the petitioners in the High Courts. NTA had applied to the Supreme Court to transfer the pending cases in the High Courts to the Supreme Court for an authoritative ruling. The three-judge Bench of the Chief Justice and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra are hearing over 40 separate petitions seeking various reliefs from fresh NEET to abolishment of the NTA itself. The NTA has urged the Supreme Court to tag its petitions to transfer the High Court cases with these petitions. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the NEET case on July 18. The primary question before the Supreme Court is whether or not to order a re-test. The court has indicated that its first priority is to examine whether the wrongdoers among the exam-takers could be segregated from the innocent students. The court has made it clear that it did not want to pass any orders which would upset the future of 23 lakh students who took NEET on May 5.
