NEET 2024 | India’s Biggest Exam Fraud?

 

Hello, friends! The results of the pre-medical exam, NEET, has caused a commotion all over the country. Although 2.3 million students took this exam this year, it is not just about these 2.3 million students. It is about every student in the country who expects to get a fair chance to get admission in a good college.

It is about every child in the country who thinks that by studying hard, he will have a bright future. We all know that in our country, there is a lot of pressure on students. Competition is very tough. There is a shortage of good colleges in the country. There is a shortage of seats in good colleges. And now the exams that are being conducted to allocate those seats, if they are not conducted properly, then what hope will be left for the future of the country? Paper leaks or misconducting exams, has become quite common over the past few years.

Just a few days after the exam, Patna police arrested 13 people for leaking the exam papers. They were charging each student ₹3 million to ₹ 5 million for those leaked papers. Not only that, look at this news from 10th May. An entire racket was busted in Gujarat. An education consultancy owner, a school teacher, and a BJP leader were charging students ₹1 million for helping in the exam.

Paper leaks have become so common in this "New" India that the Indian Express investigation has revealed that in the last 5 years, there have been 41 paper leaks, that has affected the lives of 14 million job seekers. How many times have we seen protests regarding these paper leaks? There's one going on right now, and as always these protests would have been ignored but this time the matter isn't limited to paper leaks.

When the NEET results were declared on 4th June, there were some unbelievable irregularities in it. It's being called a large-scale scam. "Is this the 'transparency' they talk about?" "If they were transparent, they would have come forward with the answers." "Our hearts break when we see the students' videos.

" "They have played a dirty trick with the students from all over the country." "Students did their best in the exam." "Mr Narendra Modi, stop being silent." "Son, you'll get passing marks, right?" Imagine, friends, what a student must go through. A 16-17 year old child studies hard day and night and spends a year preparing for this one exam.

And then you hear the news of this scam. All the hard work has been wasted. So, a very simple but important piece of advice is that There should always be a Plan B and a Plan C in life. Don't bet your entire future on one exam. You should have at least one backup plan. And I would like to offer you something related to this.

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This is the undergraduate admission exam for all medical, dental, and AYUSH courses in the country. This is the only such exam in our country. Before this, there was the AIPMT test. All India Pre-Medical Test. But in the AIPMT era, there were other pre-medical exams conducted by medical colleges and states.

To replace all those exams with one exam, NEET was introduced in 2013. In the beginning, many states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu protested against this. So it took many years. And in 2016, the first NEET exam was conducted. The NEET exams during the first 3 years were overseen by CBSE.

But after 2019, the responsibility of conducting these exams was given to NTA. NTA is the National Testing Agency. It is an autonomous agency which was established in November 2017 under the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education of India. When this agency was formed, it was hoped that it will retain its independence, and we will get more transparency while conducting exams.

People's confidence regarding these exams will increase. But the opposite has happened. Today, people's anger is directed towards this NTA. What is the reason behind this? Let's dig into it in depth. The thing is, friends, the problems started even before the exam was conducted. On 9th February, 2024, NTA opened the registration for this exam and gave one month's time.

The deadline to register was 9th March. Which is normal, one month's time was given. But on 9th March, this deadline was extended for 1 week. Now this is not a big deal because it is possible that some students were so focused on their studies that they forgot to register for the exam in this one month.

Okay, so they extended the deadline for another week. But one month later, on 9th April, this registration link was reopened. From 9th April to 10th April, on the request of the "stakeholders." And after this, once again, a correction window was granted. From 11th April to 15th April. Which "stakeholder" requested this? After this, the exam is conducted on 5th May and even after this, there were news of multiple paper leaks from different states.

Sometimes from Gujarat, sometimes from Bihar, and even from Odisha. But the real fun begins on 4th June when the results were declared. NEET exam follows an MCQ pattern, which tests students in four different subjects. Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, and Botany. Each subject has 50 questions, out of which 45 have to be attempted.

So, out of a total 200, 180 questions have to be attempted. Every correct answer gets 4 marks, every incorrect answer gets minus 1 mark. Students are given 3 hours and 20 minutes and the maximum possible marks is 720. Now, what happens is that 67 students score full marks. 720 out of 720. All of them get All India Rank 1.

This is very strange because in last year's exam only 2 people scored perfect marks. And the year before, in the 2022 NEET, only 4 people got AIR 1 but no one got full marks. 715 was the highest score. And the year before, in 2021, only 3 people scored perfect 720. And now suddenly 67 people are got the elusive perfect score.

How is this possible? NTA has stated 3 reasons for this. First, an NTA official said that this year's exam was very easy, that's why so many people could score full marks. But when students and experts were asked, before the results were declared, they had said that this year's exam was very tough.

They predicted that the average score would go down, and no one would get full marks. Secondly, NTA said that this year the number of candidates was very high. 300,000 more candidates appeared for this exam when compared to the 2023 exam. And because there were more candidates, "naturally," higher scores were seen.

But the third reason is the most interesting. NTA said that there are so many AIR 1 because 50 out of the 67 toppers, were given grace marks. Out of these 50, 44 students were given grace marks because there was some discrepancy in the answer keys. And the remaining 6 students were given grace marks due to time-related issues.

There was a physics question in this exam which had two correct answers. Because this question is in both the old and new edition of the NCERT textbook, but the two had different answers. So subject experts said that both options should be marked as correct. Now, first of all, is this how a national exam should be conducted? Students study for 12-13 hours a day for an entire year, while NTA can't even get the questions right.

And secondly, what kind of an exam is this where 75% toppers could get full marks only because they got grace marks? Let's look at this in more depth. Look at this question. In this question, you had to identify which statement is correct. The first statement is: Atoms are electrically neutral as they contain equal number of positive and negative charges.

And the second statement is: Atoms of each element are stable and emit their characteristic spectrum. The correct answer to this question is that the first statement is correct and the second statement is wrong. That is option number 4. But NTA said that we should also consider option 2 to be correct because in 2018's NCERT textbook, this statement is written there.

That the atoms of all elements are stable. NTA said that it received more than 13,000 complaints about this question. But for this reason, marking a wrong answer to be correct does it make any sense? Because after 2018, every NCERT textbook that was printed, had corrected this statement. And secondly, this is a simple and logical physics question which even a student in 10th class would know the answer to.

So the question arises, who are these students who are reading a 6-year-old edition of the textbook and grace marks were given to them. So these were the 3 reasons stated by NTA full of factual and logical loopholes. The next question to arise was, who are these 6 toppers who got grace marks due to insufficient time? Do these 6 toppers belong to the same exam centre? It's possible.

These 6 toppers were among those 1,563 students who got grace marks due to loss of time. And some of these students got 718 or 719 out of 720 marks. Which is technically impossible to score because you will either get +4 for a correct answer or -1 for a wrong answer. So under normal conditions, a person may score 720 in this exam or 716 or 715.

718 or 719 is not possible. These two students who got this score are from the same Jhajjar Centre that had the other 6 toppers. When NTA was asked the reason for these grace marks they said many NEET 2024 candidates had filed petitions to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana. Those students claimed that they had to suffer because of a loss of exam time, so NTA gave them grace marks to make up for this.

And to give them grace marks, they referred to a 2018 judgement of the Supreme Court. According to that judgement, a standard method can be normalised and calculated to see what should be the grace marks for the loss of time. But now the thing is that the 2018 judgement was about the CLAT exam for law. And this judgement was written in this category Admission to Educational Institutes Other than Medical and Engineering.

It was clearly written that this judgement cannot be used for Engineering and Medical exams. So the question is how did NTA use it? How many grace marks have been allotted exactly? Which formula has been used exactly? And if there was loss of time, really, then why wasn't the exam extended by 10-20 minutes? Why did they rely on the grace marking system? People allege that this points to corruption and that this is a scam.

The matter doesn't end here. The Junior Doctors' Network of the Indian Medical Association raised another issue. Before the results were declared, NTA released an OMR sheet, Optical Mark Recognition Sheet, which is basically a student's answer sheet where they have filled in the answers to the MCQs.

This is done so that students get a fair idea of what their score will be. But the problem is that many students got completely different marks in their scorecards as compared to their answer sheets. Take the case of 18-year-old Arshita. on her OMR sheet it was written that her score would be around 384, but when the final results were declared, her score was 308.

A difference of 80 marks. Another student, 21-year-old Shoaib said that, there was a 10-mark difference in the scores of his OMR sheet and final results. There were so many problems and before the evidence of these problems could be collected, the results were declared 10 days in advance. And these weren't any random 10 days.

Strategically, the NEET results were announced on the same day the 2024 Election results were declared. 4th June, the day when the country's media was busy covering the 2024 General Elections. Were they trying to cover up a scam amidst the ruckus of the elections? There are a lot of questions and now even the Supreme Court has directed NTA to answer.

The Supreme Court has said, "The sanctity of the exam has been affected, so we need answers." Many people have raised their voices on social media. Opposition leaders, Rahul Gandhi, Sanjay Singh, Akhilesh Yadav and MK Stalin are also demanding an investigation. They have promised to raise this issue in the Parliament as well.

With an increased pressure from these things, on 8th June, NTA announced that the Education Ministry will set up a 4-member panel to examine this issue. More than 40,000 students have signed this petition, they demand that this exam be conducted again. If you support their demand, then the link to this petition is given in the description below.

you can go sign it. Even after this, NTA says that the integrity of this exam has not been compromised. "Integrity, etc. of this exam throughout the country is not compromised." Integrity refers to the sanctity. the word was used by the Supreme Court. I would like to ask here, today, which exam has retained any form of sanctity? In every other exam, we see the same paper leaks, the same irregularities.

Does our government even care about the future of our country? Our country's education minister is Dharmendra Pradhan. He was appointed in 2021 and even after the election results, when the new government was formed, he was made the Education Minister once again. But if you check out his Twitter (X) account, he seems less of an Education Minister, and more of Narendra Modi's PR Minister.

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From top to the bottom, you will see Narendra Modi's face. Modi's has been mentioned in every other tweet. "Modi again" "Modi 3.0" Modi this, and Modi that. But if you find any tweets about the NEET exam, do let me know. Forget NEET, find any tweet related to education on his Twitter account.

Because of such people, our country's education system is in this state. Mr Dharmendra Pradhan should tell us how much has he worked for education in India over the last 3 years. Until and unless we hold these leaders accountable, we cannot find a solution of such wrongdoings and mismanagement. They hold all the power.

And this is a question of our country's future. Our students' future. And the medical infrastructure of our country. After putting so much pressure, today's latest update is that finally, NTA has agreed to remove the grace marks, and the 1,563 candidates who were given the grace marks now have the option to either retake the exam or accept their score without the grace marks.

This is the right solution for the problem caused by the grace marks. But what about the other problems? Paper leaks, inflated scores, 6 toppers from the same centre. NTA is yet to answer on these fronts. Keep raising your voice collectively like this, and remember, we must never lose hope. In 2022, more than 13,000 students committed su!cide they were depressed because of this education system.

I can understand how frustrating it must be to deal with such a system. But at the end of the day, you need to know and remember that an exam is not everything. An exam does not determine your life. So never lose your courage. You can take inspiration from my life story if you want. I have not topped any such exam.

But that does not mean that I have not been successful in life. The link to the YouTube Blueprint course is in the description below. And the coupon code is STUDENT45 And now you can click here to watch my life story in this video. Thank you very much!

 

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