Mrs. Sreelakshmi Raj, Assistant Professor in Law, N.A Global Law School, Bengaluru
ABSTRACT
In the backdrop of question paper leak in NEET and NET examinations, the government of India enacted the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act 2024. The legislation identifies the offences and attributes the punishments for the offences committed under this Act. This paper tries to analyse the provisions and check the effectiveness of the said legislation.
Introduction
This entire month of June was quite startling one with various results coming out. It all began with election results which came out on 4th June 2024. On the same day, the results of National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test also fell out which was earlier than the expected date. The common element of both these results were that it was pretty surprising for all the people. The NEET exam conducted by UGC NTA is an entrance test for admission to the undergraduate medical courses. This year the exam was conducted on 5th May 2024 and the authority had received several complaints and grievances from the candidates regarding loss of time due to technical errors in the centre. Based on the judgement given by Supreme court in an earlier case1, a normalisation formula was developed and the same was applied in 2024 results which granted grace marks to those candidates. Consequently 67 candidates achieved NEET AIR 1 with a 99.997129 percentile score2. Amidst the cries for conducting re-examination for the grace mark awarded students, a question paper leakage controversy arose. The Economic Offences Unit of Bihar (EOU), found out that around 35 medical aspirants gave around 30-50 lakhs to brokers for obtaining the question paper.
Comments