New Delhi: The Centre submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court Wednesday that an analysis of the NEET-UG 2024 results conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras found “no abnormalities” affecting the results.
The data that IIT Madras used to conduct its analysis also indicated that while there was a negative trend with respect to top rankers in Patna — where the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is investigating a paper leak — there has been an upsurge in the number of rankers from cities like Kota and Sikar in Rajasthan, the popular coaching hubs of the country.
Sikar and Kota have contributed a higher share to the group of top 500 rankers, with 29 and 18 students respectively this year, compared to 14 and four last year, according to the data. Additionally, there are 55 and 35 students among the top 1,000 rankers from Sikar and Kota this year, up from 27 and 13 last year.
Kottayam in Kerala has also seen a spike in candidates among the top 1,000 rankers.
“It is seen that Sikar, Kota and Kottayam are leading the list, and this is attributed to these places having many coaching classes, which could be the reason for this increase,” the report by IIT Madras read.
Even in the examination centre-wise data break-up, four students from Sikar city were found to be among the top 500 rankers.
A professor at IIT Delhi told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity that places like Kota and Sikar doing well should not be a surprise as most students who pass the entrance exam for IITs have also taken coaching classes there. However, he mentioned that more details would be needed to completely dismiss the allegations of a paper leak.
“Now that they have the numbers of the top scorers, we can also get more details. For those students who have scored in the 95th percentile, their performance in their schools and coaching institutions can be correlated. The coaching institutions conduct examinations every month. Their performance in those examinations can be correlated with their final results, which would also be important to identify if there were any fake cases or all were genuine,” the professor said.
The data also showed that the number of students scoring between 700 and 720 — the highest band of marks — in the NEET-UG exam increased sixfold from last year. In 2022, only 350 students achieved marks within this range, but in 2024, this number surged to 2,321.
“There is an overall increase in the marks obtained by the students, specifically in the range of 550 to 720. This increase may be attributed to the 25 percent reduction in the syllabus,” the report read.
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‘Challenging’ to detect cheating
Analysing the report submitted by IIT Madras, Vishal Vaibhav, another professor at IIT Delhi who is part of the physics department, said the integrity of an exam can be compromised by a small number of individuals cheating, which can be challenging to detect in the data.
“This study focuses on large-scale breaches. With 1.4 lakh students, the cheating must be statistically significant to be noticeable. Even a thousand instances of cheating would not make a significant difference unless they fall within a certain range, particularly in the tails of the distribution. Tails represent probabilistically unlikely events, so even a small number, like a thousand students, would need to be in the correct range within the tails to identify any anomalies. So, that is one of the constraints,” he explained.
Vaibhav also highlighted how the bell-shaped curve observed in any large-scale examination, according to the report, was not juxtaposed with last year’s data, unlike the other comparative data.
Amit Gupta, who has taught at various coaching centres in Kota for the past 24 years, pointed to two additional reasons for the surge in the number of high scorers.
“Firstly, the question paper was significantly substandard. In the biology section, they were practically copying lines directly from NCERT, as if it were an unseen passage in an English exam. There was no critical thinking required, no brainstorming. Secondly, the NTA (National Testing Agency) never disclosed anything about grace marks, suggesting they are hiding information,” he told ThePrint.
He added, “The leak happened in Patna, but it doesn’t mean it was confined to Patna. Once the paper was breached in Patna, even if there were only 30 identified beneficiaries, the paper could have been transferred electronically elsewhere. Therefore, we cannot assume that a breach at a specific place means the leak is also confined to that place. Leaks can happen anywhere, once the paper is available.”
The data also included centre-wise break-up of the rankers, indicating that there was no spike in the number of candidates securing high ranks in a particular centre in 2024 compared to 2023, indicating that “there was no localised benefit due to malpractice”.
According to Vaibhav, “If you are comparing, the center-wise data and city-wise data are similar. The distribution for city-wise and center-wise is similar. I agree with them on that. However, there is a presumption that there was no malpractice last year.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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