NEET-UG 2024: a leaked paper and 2.4 million disrupted futures

What happened

NEET-UG, the single national entrance exam for medical colleges, was held on 5 May 2024 for roughly 2.4 million candidates. When results were declared on 4 June, 67 candidates had scored a perfect 720 — in the previous four years combined, seven had. It emerged that 1,563 candidates had been awarded “grace marks” through a process with no basis in the exam’s rules, and Bihar police uncovered that question papers had been leaked in Patna before the exam. The investigation traced the leak to papers stolen from the National Testing Agency’s trunk at a school in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. The same month, the UGC-NET exam was cancelled outright after its paper was found compromised.

What the official record shows

The Supreme Court, monitoring the case through June–July 2024, recorded that the paper leak was an admitted fact and ordered the NTA to disclose how, where and when the breach occurred. The grace marks were cancelled and a retest offered to the 1,563 affected candidates. The CBI took over the investigation and arrested dozens of people, including the principal and vice-principal of the Hazaribagh school and alleged members of an organised leak network operating across Bihar, Jharkhand and other states. In July 2024 the court declined to cancel the exam for all candidates, holding that the material on record did not establish a systemic leak beyond the identified centres — while directing an expert committee under former ISRO chief K. Radhakrishnan to overhaul the NTA’s processes.

Where it stands

Criminal trials of the arrested accused are ongoing, and the exam-reform committee’s recommendations are under implementation. The episode stands as a documented institutional failure of the agency entrusted with the country’s largest entrance examinations; individual criminal culpability remains for the courts to decide.