A decision taken by the National Testing Agency (NTA) with the approval of the Centre to scrap NEET-UG 2026, upsetting the future of over 22 lakh students nationwide, is diametrically opposite to what they had said and promised in the Supreme Court amid the backlash over the NEET (UG) paper leak in 2024.

Two years ago, the Centre and the NTA had told the top court cancelling the NEET (UG) exam would be a drastic and ill-advised move, jeopardising careers of lakhs of students. They had urged segregation rather than cancellation in 2024, reasoning that students “innocent of wrongdoing should not pay a price for those who are actually found to be involved in irregularities”.

The government had argued in 2024 that cancelling the exam would be like treating “unequals equally” and that innocents and wrongdoers would be made to suffer the same consequences. “Public bodies, after all, had to act fairly and reasonably,” the Centre had submitted.

The Centre had promised the court that the enactment of the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act 2024 was solid evidence of its “seriousness about safeguarding the sanctity of exams”.

“The Union of India is committed towards making a robust examination process for conducting all competitive examinations in a fair and transparent manner, which is completely insulated from any kind of room for criminally-minded people for perpetrating any kind of malpractice such as impersonation, cheating or paper leak,” a Union government affidavit had promised the court in July 2024.

Not more than two years have passed since these assurances and a statement issued by the NTA on Tuesday (May 12) said that “inputs” and “investigative findings” necessitate the cancellation of the 2026 exam.

The top court did not cancel the NEET (UG) 2024 exam. It had held that cancellation would require the high-threshold proof of “systemic breach in the sanctity of the examination”. It is not certain if the 2026 paper leak shows such a systemic breach. The Central Bureau of Investigation is probing.

What happens next? Here’s what students need to know

In its July 2024 order, the Supreme Court enumerated four hard-hitting consequences of the cancellation of the NEET exam. These were disruption of the admission schedule for the commencement of medical courses, setting back the entire process by several months; cascading effects on the course of medical education; impact on the availability of qualified medical professionals in the future; and a grave disadvantage to students from marginalised communities and weaker sections for whom reservation has been made in the allocation of seats.

The court had concluded that the question whether or not to cancel NEET must be guided by the well-settled test of “whether it is possible to segregate tainted students from those whose candidature does not suffer from any taint”.

The court underscored that action must be pursued against “every student” found involved in wrongdoing “at any stage”.