NEET-UG paper leak: Latur centre tipped off NTA in April but agency failed to act

The NEET-UG paper leak case could have been prevented if the National Testing Agency (NTA) had acted on the complaint made by a Latur-based NEET and engineering counselling centre in April. Those in charge of the centre claimed agents were helping students secure exam centres of their choice.

According to the Latur-based counselling centre ‘Admission Made Easy', it filed a complaint with the NTA via email on April 23 this year. In the complaint, it highlighted the malpractices going on in the NEET-UG exams. The emails sent to the NTA states, "Students and parents have doubts that many malpractices are taking place in the NEET exam. Some students opt for an exam centre located 800-1,000 km or more away from the state where they live."

The email further reads, "The students whose marks in the previous year's NEET were very low are now doing MBBS with 600+ marks only because of such practices. It is suspicious that the marks have increased so much. While filling out online application forms for NEET, they are given temporary and permanent addresses of the state from where they want to take the NEET exam. They are taking advantage of the fact that they can choose centres based on the filled addresses in the NEET application form and these are not cross-checked with any documents."

"Therefore, while allotting the centre, NTA should cross-check the state from where the student passed or appeared in Std X/XI/XII and the state of his residence. If it is different, then the exam centre should be allotted by matching the address on the Aadhaar so that there is no doubt in the mind of students and parents and malpractices will be stopped," it added further.

Director Speak

Dilip Deshmukh, director of Rajshree Shahu Junior Science College in Latur alleged, "The NTA was well aware of the complaint but didn't act. It is very simple to find out how the agents are operating and how they are providing centres as per the students' choices. Why is the NTA not verifying the residential addresses of the candidates based on their documents? Every year, teachers and students complain to us, and we inform the agencies concerned, but they don't act on our complaints," said Dilip Deshmukh, director of Rajshree Shahu Junior Science College in Latur. Deshmukh shared the complaint made by the counselling centre with the NTA and said the agency didn't respond to the complaint made in April.