On 22 July, the Supreme Court concluded that there is to be no cancellation or re-examination of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test — Undergraduate (NEET UG) stating that the data is not indicative of a systemic leak of question papers. The bench, led by the Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, said that testing 23.33-lakh aspiring medical professionals, many of whom would have to travel hundreds of kilometres from hometowns to exam centres, would have “big consequences.” 

The NEET debacle can be traced back to 4 June, 2024. has unravelled this year, the future of India’s medical students has been in disarray. When the National Testing Agency (NTA) declared the results of the students on 4 June, 2024, they hoped that any form of hue and cry would be drowned out from the Lok Sabha election results. However, this did not happen. 

Over 23-lakh students attempted the examination in May 2024. A few days after the exam was held, Patna police arrested 13 people for leaking the exam papers. The accused charged students amounts ranging from Rs 30-lakhs to Rs 50 -lakh to send question papers to students. According to a leading business newspaper, paper leaks have been prevalent in Gujarat, Odisha and Bihar, with arrests being made in all states. 

Readers of PrintWeek will recall that on 22 June 2024, the UP police arrested Ravi Atri who was part of the solver gang. The gang’s expertise lies in procuring the question paper a day before the exam, and sending solved question papers to students via encrypted platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp. 

An investigation conducted by the Indian Express revealed that in the past five years, there have been 41 paper leaks with 1.4 crore job seekers through entrance exams have borne the brunt. It must be understood that every time that the transparency of such an exam is affected, it implies that a student has wasted thousands of hours preparing for a system that is rigged.

A large part of the issue lies in the fact that these exams are pen and paper exams being held at a massive scale. Papers are set, printed and then transported to the designated exam centres. This leaves several opportunities for human interference. Gangs, such as the Solver Gang, try to contact third parties like coaching classes and tuition masters who take advantage wherever possible. 

Leonard Fernandes, the convenor of the Publishing Next conference in Goa says, “Exams like the NEET or GMAT, are conducted via computer and can be taken at any time during the year. The exam centre, in this case, the NTA, has a bank of around 5,000 questions, and a prescribed number of questions are randomly selected for each candidate. Since the questions are multiple-choice, they are immediately evaluated. However, I have a question: How do these individuals know who to contact to obtain leaked exam papers?”

Fernandes is right. The exam leak problem plagues the nation.

On 19 June 2024, the University Grants Commission–National Eligibility Test (UGC NET) examination, which is held to qualify aspirants to become assistant professors in universities, was invalidated without clear reasoning, and the investigation was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) UGC NET is held once a year to qualify those for junior research fellowships and other positions were also cancelled by the NTA due to ‘unavoidable circumstances and logistical issues’. There was no further explanation. 

The NTA is an autonomous agency established in 2017, under the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education in India. After the arrests made in Patna, officials from the Bihar police held a press conference during which they said that the

NTA is not dealing with the issue with the required urgency. 

When the results of NEET were declared this year, several irregularities were evident. Unlike the past few years, with only one or two students securing All India Rank 1 (AIR), 67 students secured 720/ 720 this year. According to the NTA, this happened because this year’s exam was “comparatively easier”. However, on 6 May, just a day after the exam was conducted, experts predicted a slight dip in scores as this year’s paper was said to be lengthier than the rest. 50 out of these 67 students were awarded ‘grace marks’ for various reasons: loss of time, discrepancies in answer keys and others. Several other students were awarded marks like 718/ 719 which are logistically impossible considering every correct NEET answer carries four marks and the paper is set in a MCQ format. The reasoning that the NTA gave for this is that several students filed petitions in the Punjab and Haryana courts in order to be compensated for their loss of time. Interestingly, it should be noted that six of the 67 students belonged to the same centre.

Reports indicate that out of the total candidates, a little over 81,000 (or 3.49%) scored 600 and above out of 720 marks in this year's examination. This contrasts with 2023, when 29,351 candidates (1.43% of the total) and 2022, when 21,164 candidates (1.19%) did so. 100 of the 4,750 test centres had more than three times the average share of high scoring candidates with their scores exceeding 600 marks.

A total of 1,500 students were awarded grace marks in NEET 2024. The NTA set up a four member panel to re-evaluate their grace marks on 8 June, finally concluding that all students who had been awarded grace marks would have to either re-appear for the exam or accept their scores prior to grace marks. 

The Supreme Court of India stated that the sanctity of the exam has been compromised and that it needed answers.

As Manu Choudhury, director of CDC Printers says, “An ideal scenario would involve every city or district having a central printing service equipped with a basic monochrome digital printing machine. This service would print exam papers on the morning of the exam, with each question paper personalised with candidate details. While the questions will remain the same, their sequence will be randomly changed, and ideally, each question will be rephrased into 10 different versions. This approach is similar to what TOEFL and SAT exams do in paper format, representing the final step in the printing process.”  

Choudhary points out, “It's worth noting that personalised items like cheque books and credit cards are delivered on the same day, demonstrating the capabilities of modern personalisation technologies,” This is one for the policy makers to mull over.

PrintWeek’s view:
Exam paper leaks are  a national issue that require a coordinated approach. By bringing together key stakeholders, the print industry can drive innovation, share knowledge, and develop robust strategies to combat this menace effectively.

A print expert, who PrintWeek spoke to said, “Solutions to these problems can be done by increasing the in- house expertise and resources available to the NTA.  There should also be a thorough vetting process including confidentiality agreements.” This is easier said than done, since in most cases, there is one print supervisor or print manager who is involved in the scam.  And so even though multiple sets of question papers are created and distributed, the effort is nullified. 

The print expert says, “The rot is deep. India’s examination system needs a highly evolved print revolution with smart tools that can provide a solution.”