Another dirty NEET secret? Students' ranks jump on 2nd attempt from obscure centres

MUMBAI: When Ashalata (name changed) took the NEET for the first time in 2022, her rank was in the six-digit range. However, in her second attempt the following year, her rank leapfrogged from 2 lakh-plus to 8,000. At present, the 20-year-old is a student of LTMG Sion Hospital in Mumbai.

Another aspirant from 2022 who had secured a rank beyond 10 lakh now studies in a govt hospital in Mumbai after she secured a rank of around 13,000 in her second attempt in 2023.

This "second-time lucky" trend, with students scoring "unbelievable" ranks after taking a year's break to prepare for the second attempt, has been seen as baffling by academics in medical corridors. And there was a common thread: the second time, each had taken the exam from an obscure centre. While some took it from a tiny village in Belagavi, others opted for a small town near Patna and other places not popular as coaching hubs.

Govt sources said attempts are on to make a list of students who scored well in their second attempt at obscure centres and are now pursuing MBBS in govt-run medical colleges.

This year, a similar scenario emerged when students from various states opted to take the exam from a school in Godhra, Gujarat. The Gujarat police, who blew the lid off the scam, said students were asked to fill answers for the questions they knew and leave the rest unanswered.

"The empty answer-sheets were to be filled in by the centre's deputy superintendent during the half-hour gap the supervisors get to pack the papers. The answer key was to be provided by coaching institutes, which make the key available online after the exam," Godhra superintendent of police Himanshu Solanki said. A counsellor said police should investigate how students managed to get allocated to centres that are "compromised".

When candidates fill their NEET (UG) application, they are expected to give two cities as options for exam centres. Parent representative and counsellor Sudha Shenoy said, "Before filling the form in Feb, parents called me about agents who had said that they would fill the form for the candidates and that exam centres would be far from cities."

Another dirty NEET secret? Students' ranks jump on 2nd attempt from obscure centres

Experts: NEET issue not local, likely to have ‘large spread'

They had assured the parents that their child would get ‘high’ rank and demanded Rs 1 lakh as advance and Rs 9 lakh after the results. I had dissuaded them from falling into any such trap, parent representative and counsellor Sudha Shenoy said.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) has always maintained that a computer randomly generates an exam centre based on the choice of cities given by each candidate. “If computer-generated centres are given, how are students who have paid ending up in compromised exam centres,” asked Shenoy.

In another instance last year, a private university’s head was surprised to find the brightest first-year students failing on concepts that they had cracked in the entrance test conducted by the university just about 10 months ago and analysed the problem closely to find that some of their exam centres were compromised. “We changed the test agency we worked with. We realised that the exam centres were compromised,” the head of the university, who did not want to be named, told TOI.

Experts said the NEET 2024 controversy is not just “local” but probably one with a “large spread.” The NTA needs to “look closely” at the system and “find gaps and fix them”, they said.

Student representative and counsellor Sachin Bangad said, “A student should be allotted a local centre based on the combination of where the candidate took the Class X, XII exams and the address on the Aadhar card. Additionally, govt officials need to be roped in for supervision. Like in the polling system, they should be informed merely a night before where their exam supervision duty is.”

An officer, who has worked with the Maharashtra admission process for decades, said NEET should be conducted on computers for safety reasons. “Additionally, the new provisions brought in for the post-graduate test, to break down the test into multiple-timed sections that cannot be revisited once the time is up, should also be brought into the UG test,” the officer added.