'PM Modi personally monitoring NEET paper leak': Centre tells Supreme Court as bench seeks explanation

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, informed a bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe that the Prime Minister himself was keeping a close watch on the issue. The bench, however, turned that claim back on the government almost immediately.

The Supreme Court on Friday was told that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is personally monitoring the NEET-UG paper leak controversy, but the bench was in no mood to be satisfied by that assurance, pressing the Centre on how the failure had occurred despite regular oversight and asking hard questions about accountability within the National Testing Agency.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, informed a bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe that the Prime Minister himself was keeping a close watch on the issue. The bench, however, turned that claim back on the government almost immediately.

"Have you been having regular meetings? How did this failure occur despite all the monitoring?" the Court asked pointedly.

The National Testing Agency and the Chairman of the High Powered Committee, Dr K Radhakrishnan, told the Court that the committee had made around 60 recommendations, many of which had already been implemented, with certain procedural reforms still pending and set to be in place before the rescheduled NEET-UG examination. The bench was unmoved.

"Then there is something wrong with the original recommendations, or there has not been effective monitoring. How did this occur?" Justice Narasimha observed.

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The Court also turned its attention to the question of accountability, or the lack of it. "Accountability has not been put in place. Accountability would be effective only when you identify on whose shoulders the responsibility lies," the bench said, adding that "diffused obligation" ultimately results in responsibility being quietly shifted towards the government in general, with no individual held to account.

The judges were equally firm on the need for lasting structural change rather than short-term fixes. "Institutional reforms, not individuals. Irrespective of people coming or going, there must be something that evolves within the system," the bench observed, pointing to the UPSC as an example of a world-class institution that India had successfully built, and saying the NTA must develop similar credibility.

The human cost of repeated examination controversies was not lost on the Court either. "It is actually very traumatic, not just for students but for families. There is an investment of years of study and emotions," the bench said.

The Court directed the Ministry of Education to file a separate affidavit within six weeks detailing the mechanism by which the NTA would institutionalise the conduct of NEET examinations on a year-to-year basis. The affidavit must explain how the agency would develop institutional memory and expertise through specialised personnel and a broad-based panel of experts, with the explicit goal of ensuring that controversies like those of 2024 and 2026 are never repeated.

The matter will next be heard in the second week of July, with the Court indicating it would continue monitoring proceedings for some time to come.

Also Read: NEET-UG 2026 cancelled to protect students’ interests: NTA tell Supreme Court

(With ANI inputs)