Supreme Court Vows To Fix NEET And Stop Paper Leaks
The Supreme Court pushes the government to fix NEET's paper leak problem and asks about shifting to computer based testing like JEE.
AC Team
If you have ever sat for a competitive exam, you know the feeling. Your palms sweat, your leg bounces under the desk, and somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder if the question paper actually stayed sealed until the exam started. For lakhs of NEET aspirants across India, that worry has turned into something much bigger than exam-day nerves. It has turned into street protests.
On Friday, the Supreme Court stepped into this mess and said something students have been waiting to hear for years. The system's habit of fixing problems on the fly, patch by patch, has to stop. The court called this approach "troubling" and promised to walk the extra mile to make NEET tamper proof.
What Exactly Did The Court Say
A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe heard a batch of petitions asking for a leak proof medical entrance exam. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the government, said the centre was ready to go "10 extra miles" for students and that top officials were personally watching the matter. The court did not let that statement slide as just words. It asked Mehta to move fast and gave the government time till August 3 to share details of the new system it plans to build.
The judges did not stop there. They pointed out specific gaps the government still needs to close. One of them is the governing board recommended by the high-level committee led by former ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan. The court asked for a clear update on how this board will work, who sits on it, and how it stays transparent.
The Big Shift: Computer Based Testing
Here is the part that could change NEET forever. The court asked the centre to respond on moving the exam to a computer based format, similar to how IIT-JEE is conducted. Paper leaks happen because paper exists. Take away the paper, and you take away one entire category of scams.
But the court is not naive about the switch. It raised sharp questions about how student data will move from the old system to the new one, how that data will stay protected, and who will handle cybersecurity. These are fair questions. A digital exam with weak data protection just swaps one problem for another.
Why Ad Hocism Bothers The Court So Much
The bench used a phrase that sums up years of frustration: "Ad-hocism has troubled us the most throughout these years." Think about it like patching a leaky roof with tape every monsoon instead of fixing the actual crack. It works for a while, then the rain finds a new spot. NEET has had a similar pattern. A leak happens, a committee is formed, some fixes are announced, and then the cycle repeats before the next exam cycle.
The court wants to break that cycle by focusing on what it called institutionalisation. In plain words, build a system with rules, boards, and checks that work on their own, without needing a crisis to trigger action every single year.
Some Good News From NEET-PG 2025
Dr Radhakrishnan, who heads the monitoring committee set up by the court in 2024, gave the bench an update that offers a bit of hope. His committee submitted 35 long-term recommendations and around 60 short-term ones, and most are already in place. He said NEET-PG 2025 went off mostly smoothly because of these changes, though a few centres did face power outages. Not perfect, but a clear step up from the chaos of previous years.
What This Means For Students
If you are prepping for NEET or have a sibling gearing up for it, here is the practical takeaway. The exam format could shift to computer based testing in the near future, similar to JEE. There will be more oversight through a governing board with real accountability. And the court is not treating this as a one-time fix. It plans to keep monitoring the process until the new system is fully in place.
None of this means paper leaks vanish overnight. Change like this takes time, and August 3 will tell us how serious the government's next steps really are. But for the first time in a while, the conversation has moved from damage control to actual system design. That shift alone is worth paying attention to.
