SC declines urgent hearing on plea seeking CBI, ED probe into alleged NEET-UG paper leak

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to direct an urgent listing of a plea seeking an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the alleged NEET-UG paper leak.

A bench, headed by Justice Abhay S. Oka, refused to issue notice to the central investigative agencies saying that the batch of petitions, including seeking cancellation of the exam, is already coming up for hearing on July 8.

The application filed in a pending petition stated that the offence is not confined to the IPC alone and the accused must be brought under the stringent provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

In an earlier hearing, the top court had turned down the request to defer the commencement of the admission counselling process and has reiterated on many occasions that it would not pass any interim direction to stay the counselling process to medical programmes pursuant to the NEET-UG exam.

Meanwhile, the Centre on Saturday ordered a CBI investigation into the allegations of paper leak and other irregularities in the conduct of the NEET-UG 2024 exam held on May 5 this year in the offline OMR mode. The NEET-UG, an abbreviation for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate), is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admission to undergraduate medical programmes.