NEW DELHI: Amid nationwide protests over alleged examination paper leaks and growing demands for accountability and reforms, the Supreme Court on Friday said it was prepared to “tread an extra mile” to address systemic flaws and make the NEET examination process foolproof.
Observing that the prevailing “ad hocism” in the system was “troubling” and could not be allowed to continue, a bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe emphasised the need to institutionalise reforms.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that the Centre was willing to go “10 extra miles” to safeguard students’ interests and that the matter was being monitored at the highest level. Seeking a short adjournment, he said the government was actively considering reforms and that significant developments were expected soon.
The bench granted the Centre time until August 3 to submit an affidavit outlining the proposed reforms and the contours of the new examination system.
The court also sought the Centre’s response on the feasibility of introducing a computer-based NEET, on the lines of the IIT-JEE examination.
The bench was hearing a batch of petitions, including those filed by the Federation of All India Medical Association and the United Doctors Front, seeking measures to make NEET tamper-proof.
During the hearing, the court pointed to several issues requiring urgent attention, including the implementation of recommendations made by the high-level committee headed by former ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan.
“We will highlight a couple of things we wanted to indicate… Last time, you mentioned the Radhakrishnan committee’s recommendations. There is a specific reference to the governing board. Your affidavit should indicate what has been done with respect to the governing board, including transparency, nominations and stakeholder representation,” the bench said.
The Supreme Court made it clear that it would continue monitoring the reform process until a robust institutional framework was in place.
“We are focusing on institutionalisation. Ad hocism has troubled us the most throughout these years,” the bench observed.
It also raised concerns about the proposed transition to a computer-based examination, asking the Centre to explain how data would be transferred, secured and protected.
“A very important aspect is the transition to computer-based testing. Can it be shifted? How will the data be transferred? How will the data be protected? Data safety is the most important aspect. You indicate to us. Cybersecurity, who is to undertake it, how it is to be conducted etc,” the court said.
Earlier, Dr K Radhakrishnan, who heads the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee constituted in 2024 to recommend reforms to NEET, informed the bench that the panel had submitted 35 long-term and around 60 short-term recommendations, most of which had already been implemented.
According to Radhakrishnan, the reforms had yielded encouraging results in NEET-PG 2025, which was conducted “mostly satisfactorily”, with only minor issues such as power outages reported.
