NEET-PG 2025 | 'Disclose Your Policy On Publishing Answer Keys': Supreme Court Asks NBE

While remarking that transparency is an important factor, the Supreme Court today stated that it will examine whether publishing answer keys for the NEET-PG exam would compromise the integrity of the examination. At the same time, the Court made it clear that it will not go into individual allegations that the NEET-PG 2025 has discrepancies. 

A bench comprising Justice PS Narasimha and Justice Vipul M Pancholi today heard a batch of petitions raising various issues in regards to the NEET-PG exams, including disclosure of answer keys as a matter of transparency, etc. 

At the outset, the Court asked why these matters are before this bench since these matters had been heard by a bench comprising Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice KV Viswanathan, which had issued notice on September 26 in three petitions seeking publication of the answer keys in the NEET-PG exam and raising issues of discrepancies. 

While it was not clear why the matters were before the present bench, the counsel for the National Board of Examination (NBE) submitted that they are very clear with their policy that the students have to sign a non-disclosure agreement with regard to the answer keys. On this, Justice Narasimha asked if the Court can take a similar approach as it took in the UPSC matter, where the Commission brought in a drastic change in its policy to provisionally publish answer keys after the preliminary examination. 

The NBE's counsel submitted that these petitions are being pushed by the coaching institutes as they want to get hold of the answer keys for the purpose of question booklets. She submitted that it would compromise the quality of the examination. 

When Justice Narasimha asked where their policy was stated, initially, it was submitted that it's on the website. The counsel then later clarified that it's an unwritten policy which has been going on as a matter of convention. 

The Court has now asked the NBE to seek instructions on this policy and disclose its clear stand on this. NBE will have to file an affidavit in this regard.

As for the other petitions raising issues of various discrepancies in the conduct of the examination, the Court clarified that it will not go into individual allegations.

The writ petitions have been filed seeking measures to ensure increased transparency in the NEET-PG exam, including the publication of answer keys. On April 29, in another matter, the Court directed publication of raw scores, answer keys, and normalisation formulae for transparency.