The National Testing Agency (NTA) had on Saturday released city- and centre-wise results of the medical entrance exam, which is riddled with accusations of paper leak and inordinate inflation of marks. (Photo: PTI)
The Supreme Court (SC) is scheduled to hear on Monday a public interest litigation seeking a court-monitored investigation into the electoral bonds scheme.
A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra is likely to hear the PILs filed by NGOs Common Cause and the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL).
The PIL of the two NGOs alleges an “apparent quid pro quo” between political parties, corporations and investigative agencies.
Terming the electoral bonds scheme a “scam”, the plea sought a direction to authorities to investigate the source of funding of “shell companies and loss-making companies which made donations to various political parties, as has been disclosed by the data released by the Election Commission (EC)”.
The petition has also sought a direction to the authorities to recover the money donated by companies as part of “quid pro quo arrangements where these are found to be proceeds of crime”.
A five-judge Constitution bench had on February 15 scrapped the electoral bonds scheme of anonymous political funding introduced by the BJP government.
Following the top court’s judgement, the State Bank of India, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, had shared the data with the EC, which later made it public.
The electoral bonds scheme, which was notified by the government on January 2, 2018, was pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties as part of its efforts to bring in transparency in political funding.
“The electoral bond scam has a money trail unlike the 2G scam or the coal scam, where allocations of spectrum and coal mining leases were arbitrarily made, but there was no evidence of a money trail. Yet this court ordered court-monitored investigations in both those cases, appointed special public prosecutors and formed special courts to deal with those cases,” the plea said.
NEET-UG Plea
The SC is also scheduled to hear a batch of petitions related to the controversy-ridden medical entrance exam, NEET-UG 2024, which was held on May 5.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) had on Saturday released city- and centre-wise results of the medical entrance exam, which is riddled with accusations of paper leak and inordinate inflation of marks.
According to the cause list of July 22 uploaded on the apex court’s website, a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra would hear more than 40 pleas, including those filed by the NTA seeking transfer of cases pending against it in various high courts on the NEET-UG row to the Supreme Court to avoid multiplicity of litigations.
An analysis of data released by NTA indicated that the candidates who allegedly benefitted from the paper leak and other irregularities did not do well. Some centres, however, showed high concentration of well-performing students, it revealed.
The voluminous data of over 32 lakh candidates from 4,750 centres was not released in a cumulative format but in a drop-down menu for each centre. The data was released on the direction of the Supreme Court which is hearing several petitions over the alleged irregularities as lakhs of aspirants await a final verdict on the fate of the exam.
The performance of the candidates from the centres under the scanner — such as Oasis School, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, Hardayal Public School, Jhajjar, Haryana, Jay Jalaram International School in Godhra, Gujarat — were comparatively much below par.
On July 11, the top court had adjourned till July 18 the hearing on the pleas, including those seeking cancellation of the exam, re-test and probe into alleged malpractices in the conduct of NEET-UG 2024, as the responses of the Centre and the NTA were yet to be received by some parties.
The bench had observed that it had received a status report from the Central Bureau of Investigation on the progress made in the probe.
In an additional affidavit filed in the apex court last week, the Centre said data analysis of the results of NEET-UG 2024 was conducted by IIT-Madras, which found there was no indication of “mass malpractice” or any localised set of candidates scoring abnormally high marks.
While hearing the pleas on July 8, the top court had observed that the sanctity of the NEET-UG 2024 has been “breached”.
Saying that a re-test may be ordered if the entire process was affected, the bench had sought details from the NTA and the CBI, including the timing and manner of the alleged paper leak, besides the number of wrongdoers to understand the extent of irregularities claimed by the petitioners.
More than 23.33 lakh students had taken the test on May 5 at 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including in 14 cities overseas.
The Centre and the NTA, in their earlier affidavits filed in the apex court, had said that scrapping the exam would be “counterproductive” and “seriously jeopardise” lakhs of honest candidates in the absence of any proof of large-scale breach of confidentiality.
The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is conducted by the NTA for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions across the country.
First Published: Jul 21 2024 | 4:18 PM IST
