Amid the ongoing controversy in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-UG 2024, petitioners on Monday filed an application in the Supreme Court demanding an Enforcement Directorate probe into the alleged irregularities. The demand comes a day after the Central Bureau of Investigation took over the probe into malpractices of NEET-UG, filing a case to investigate a “larger conspiracy” into the examination. The CBI dispatched its special teams to Gujarat and Bihar, where close to two dozen people have been arrested over suspicion that they had a role in leaking questions or enabling cheating. Essentially, as the 18th Lok Sabha session is set to begin today, the NEET-UG controversy is expected to remain one of the key issues that will be debated.
In light of the back-and-forth cancellations and postponement of the exams by the NTA, the Central government on Sunday sacked the Director General of NTA, Subodh Kumar Singh. Pradeep Singh Kharola will serve as the interim head of the National Testing Agency.
Additionally, in yet another blow to the medical students, the Ministry of Health on late Saturday night postponed the NEET-PG 2024 exam, just hours before the exam was scheduled to take place on Sunday morning. The postponement of the exam comes at a time when the country is already witnessing massive outrage due to alleged paper leaks of the NEET-UG exam, the surprise cancellation of UGC-NET, and the postponement of the CSIR-UGC-NET. Releasing a statement, the Ministry of Health said that the NEET-PG exam is being postponed due to the recent incidents of allegations regarding the integrity of certain competitive examinations.
While the CBI took over the probe into NEET-UG exam irregularities, the NTA on the other hand, sent show-cause notices to 17 candidates in Patna, threatening to debar them based on the report sent to the Centre by the Bihar Police’s Economic Offences Unit. The Education Ministry believes that the irregularities mentioned in the Bihar EUO reports are “localized problems” that can be addressed by debarring the candidates involved. The EOU’s investigation showed that 68 questions of the estimated 200 questions of the burnt remains of a purported photocopy of the question paper matched with the original one that the NTA had shared with the EOU five days ago.
Apart from the Patna candidates, the NTA also issued show-cause notices to a total of 30 candidates who appeared at two centers in Gujarat’s Godhra who were assisted by the invigilators and staff in filling in correct answers in their OMR sheets. Similarly, the Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttar Pradesh Police on Sunday arrested six members of a gang, including a staff of a printing press, for their alleged involvement in leaking the examination paper for the posts of review officers and assistant review officers. These developments came a day after the Education Ministry announced an expert committee headed by former ISRO chairman, K Radhakrishnan to look into exam reforms and review NTA’s functioning.
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