With the recent declaration of results of NEET 2024, and the prior declaration of JEE Mains 2024 results, the incompetency of the National Testing Agency in all fields pertaining to organising entrance exams in India has been highlighted. Problems will be discussed in their entirety below and proofs will be shared wherever possible.

Let us start from the beginning, the answer keys have been announced for JEE Mains 2024 Session 1, but only for some shifts, students of some shifts have not been able to access their recorded responses or answer key given by NTA and the site showed "no record found". After almost 12 hours, the answer keys and recorded responses were available for all shifts. But their is a problem to be addressed : wrong answers and ambiguity in questions. NTA had announced an answer key challenge period in which students had to pay NTA to challenge the answer keys and give their logical explanation for their choice of answers and even though millions of students challenged the answers where even highly educated teachers thought the answer key should be changed or that the question was ambiguous and should be dropped, NTA accepted only a few changes (where most were due to language translation problems so given correct only in other mediums than English) and provided no reason for the rejection of our queries.

Then, JEE Mains 2024 Session 1 results have just been announced and their is a huge uproar. Why? Because of blatant uneven distribution of marks and percentile in different shifts. Shift 1, 27th January was the easiest shift as per students and Shift 2, 31st January was the most difficult shift as per students but the discrepancy in marks for the same percentile was a huge shock to everybody. For the same percentile, you would have required around 80 marks lesser in the latter shift as compared to the former while the maximum marks obatainable in JEE Mains is 300 (trusted percentile v/s marks sources have been attached).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There may be many reasons for the discrepancy between shifts in Session 1, but the difference in difficulty of papers was never a factor. According to NTA, the aforemntioned marks v/s percentile was because of a process called "normalisation" where they decide which day/shift marks get more priority according to their subjective belief in level of difficulty of papers. It is completely unfair to say that people who gave the JEE Mains on 27th January Shift 1 and got 99%ile would have scored 151 in 31st January Shift 2 (for according to NTA, their percentile distribution shows that a person getting 233 in 27th Shift 1 has the same level as a person scoring 151 in 31st Shift 2). There were some rumours about unfair distribution of students in respective shifts such that there were more number of people in the earlier days of the exam and lesser in the later days (in my own coaching, except for 2, all top 15 students had gotten the same 27th Shift 1 and out of total 50 people, 40 have gotten 27th Shift 1) and there have been numerous surveys conducted by people with different groups of large number of people which did show that 27th Shift 1 had the most number of people and it kept decreasing (proof attached below, the person who tweeted this is a teacher at a big online coaching and test series instituion) (the surveys had not been affected by any bias or ill intention of any voters to prove 27th Shift 1 had the most number of students).

 

 

 

 

Students and teachers alike filed RTI's to NTA demanding to know the distribution of students per shift in this year's JEE Mains because there had been no press release for the same. Coincidentally, NTA had always realeased the data for number of students and other information in the previous years but for some reason, decided not to release it this year. Then because of the 30 day deadline, NTA eventually had to release the distribution but shockingly, their data claimed an approxmate even distribution of students in all shifts. What was even more surprising was that when we looked at the number of students with 100%ile (full marks in that shift/1st rankers) there were 8 in 27th Shift 1 and only 1 in each other shift. Was the shift so easy that with an even distribution fo students, 8 people got full marks? No, the answer is a clear no, considering only 27th Shift 1 had 8 first rankers but only 1 in other shifts when the difficulty was not so far off (it is agreed that the difficulty was different for each shift/day but not so far off that such a skewed marks v/s percentile or such a big difference in first rankers would have happened).

 

 

 

 

Now even if we believe that NTA did not commit and mistake or there was no system malfunction during JEE Mains 2024 Session 1, it would still be problematic for students to get such a huge variance in difficulty between shifts and then the subjective normalisation by NTA causes so many students to get a rank equivalent to much lower marks in other shifts even thought that might not have been true if the same students had gotten other shifts.
Now, JEE Mains Session 2 examination begins and this time every student hopes for similiar level difficulty between shifts and also no problems in conduct but the conduct of the examination was still marred with problems. Two of the major problems were cheating through mobile communication during the examination time in the centre and cheating from your neighbour.

Mobile communication : Several people had taken their mobile phones in the centre because of low security or no importance to ensuring that the exam is conducted smoothly or some position of power held by someone in the student's family. A screenshot was leaked during the time of the 5th April Shift 1 examination where a user on discord had asked for answers of questions in the paper (which had been confirmed to be from that shift) and it was really not possible for even the best editors to edit a photo in such a way that it looked taken from the centre but had the same questions as that shift in such a less time. Proof attached :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The person who had uploaded this information online (to a reddit community named JEENEETards) had a reddit account since a long time but had to delete it because he was doxxed and was getting numerous threats on all his social media and personal numbers hinting that power abuse was involved in this incident. This incident is not new and has been happening since a long time with an unfair means (UFM) case in 2022 and even in session 1, some centres had really no security or concern with invigilators talking between the examination, ordering food and not even being in the room (which caused delay in providing rough sheets to students who needed them and wasted their time) due to which, students have been able to carry phones in washrooms and check for answers but this is the case where hard proof was given and still, NTA did not acknowledge this.

 

Cheating from neighbour : The entire case of cheating of Kesam Channa Basava Reddy has been highlighted on this website : https://jeeneetards-research.vercel.app/posts/the-air-14-fraud

Summary : The shocking turnaround of the student who got 7%ile in Session 1 and got 100%ile (full marks) in Session 2 was not actually because he was ill in session 1 (as he or his coaching claimed to be) but rather because he cheated from the person beside him who got full marks and got AIR 15 in that session. There have been numerous proofs to back this up (from the AIR 15 himself, whistleblowers from the coaching where the apparent AIR 14 was studying from showing how he never got more than half marks in mock tests and that the guy did not give JEE advanced even when he got full in JEE mains and was not sick again as he claimed to be in session 1) but NTA did not respond to any allegations about the aforementioned controversy except one statement claiming they would investigate the matter but nothing ever happened.

I do not support/condone any harrasment of the accused.I

Another major point of issue is the fact that many NEET exam takers have been giving JEE Mains since a long time on the basis of getting practice for NEET and have scored much higher because of the fact that they do not attempt the math section and devote all of the 3 hours to Physics and Chemistry while a JEE Mains student has to qualify for individual subject cutoffs and thus has to attempt all three (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry) sections where Mathematics is the toughest and most time consuming which makes that student get lesser marks and percentile than the student who is going to NEET. The problem in this is clearly the fact that our JEE Mains exams meant to choose students who are going to become engineers are not oriented in that direction and are rather more suitable for NEET exam givers who are easily clearing the theoritical physics and memory based chemistry questions (the level of questions and the numerical solving in Physics and Chemistry sections has greatly decreased under NTA which is a really big issue because this means JEE Mains is going towards mugging up and theory based questions rather than asking more practical or numerical based sums to test student's concept) which drives up the cut-off for JEE Advanced and also lowers the percentile for many JEE Mains students.

All these are the biggest and most problematic points of NTA and its mismanagement of JEE Mains 2024 but there have been numeorus site/technical glitches too like frequent site crashes/unresponsive site/delayed answer key/result release, not showing photos/QR codes in admit cards/results to stating that the candidate is eligible for JEE Advanced 2024 even when his percenctile are below the cutoff for the same.

 

Now onto the recent declaration of NEET 2024 results :

Firstly, here is the rank v/s marks for this years NEET : 

 

 

 

 

67 students full in NEET 2024 (720/720 perfect score) which has never happened before and is really dangerous. Why? Because that would mean either that the paper was really easy or that there has been some really bad management in alloting marks and a cheating risk. Actually, both have happened and here is the detailed explanation :

The top college for medical UG - AIIMS Delhi has a total of 132 seats out of which 48 are for open category, (7 for foreign nationals and 11 for EWS) which would means that a person who scored full, all there was to score, will not be able to get into the top college if he was from open category and got a rank below 48 (the ranks will be alloted on the basis of a draw from a computer randomly without human intervention if a tie exists after comparing individual subject scores). Is this how a student preparing day and night to get a good college will be awarded even after getting all that was to get in the exam? The difficulty of all exams has dropped significantly under NTA and such an exam where the paper is so easy that scoring high marks will still not get you top colleges because too many people are getting the same number of marks and the tie is decided by "random draws by a computer without human intervention" is the worst exam to even be called an entrance exam for colleges of medical/engineering. It is concerning that NTA has not accepted it's mistake of making easy papers and keeps defending itself against all allegations when students future is at stake.

 

During the exam itself, exam papers had been leaked and the pictures of the paper (with the correct answers already marked) had been leaked on the internet confirmed to be the actual paper students got in the centre).

 

 

 

 

This news was picked up by NTA and they quickly addressed it saying that the centre had given english paper to students who had exam in Hindi and thus they stormed out of the centre in anger and tried to protest it.

 

 

 

 

But why would the answers already be marked on the paper, NTA did not address that. After that, we started getting news that in several places, the NEET paper was leaked and the perpetrators were caught by police, but once the paper is leaked, it is pretty easy to distribute it online before being caught.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then telegram channel screenshots were uploaded (before NEET) claiming to have the paper and distributing it for some amount of money and the person (allegedly working in NTA itself) had even revealed the identity of the person he/she worked for ( - https://www.reddit.com/r/JEENEETards/comments/1cja8p4 It was thought to be a hoax, but then, a clear proof of paper being leaked was found - a screen recording of telegram channels showing the exact date of uploading the paper (before 5th May when NEET 2024 was officially conducted) - https://www.reddit.com/r/JEENEETards/comments/1d8or6h

Again, NTA, trying to keep it's reputation well, released a notice explaining why 67 people got full marks while in 2023 only 1 student got full and in 2022 nobody got full. They said the rise in number of students by almost 3 lakhs (from ~20 lakhs to ~23 lakhs) had been the cause of the rise of the number of full scorers increase from 0/1 to 67. They have provided the data for average marks for NEET 2024 which has seen a significant jump to 323.55 from 279.41 in 2023 and 259.00 in 2022.

https://exams.nta.ac.in/NEET/images/Press_Release_NEET%202024_06.06.2024.pdf

Moreover, the NEET results which were to be announced on 14th June were announced 10 days earlier to coincide with the elections results on 4th June which meant the heavily skewed rank v/s marks did not get media attention for one or two days which is really intriguing.

Another point to look for in their notice is that they have awarded grace marks to 1563 students to compensate for their loss of time due to which some students have got 718/719 marks this year too (physically impossible marks to obtain normally). The point of the grace marks was to compensate the students whose omr marksheet was taken early due to which they missed out on attempting some questions. How was it decided to award marks for the reason of missing out on some questions but rather gave such an amount which caused some students to have physically impossible marks? Out of ~23 lakh students, did only 1563 students face loss of time? And suspiciously, many of them were from one centre only, did really no other centres in India in 2024 and rather no centres in India before 2024 never take the paper before time? Also, the notice states that people who got grace marks have marks ranging from -20 to 720. How did NTA even decide that a person could get full marks because he lost out on time? The response sheet of a person who actually got 626 out of 720 has been uploaded and she has been allegedly given grace marks of 94 so that her total comes out to be 720 (full) out of 720. Proof attached :

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coincidentally, many students in the same aforementioned centre have also gotten grace marks with some people getting even more than 100 marks and there are too many students from the same centre with a similiar roll number gettin full marks from that centre. Along with having a similiar roll number, their roll numbers differ by 12, and NEET has a seating arrangement of 6+6 people meaning all these 720 scorers could have potentially been seated together. I am not alleging any cheating, but grace marks have come into play in that centre is already clear, thus if so many students are getting full because of grace marks from one centre, shouldn't NTA have conducted a retest as it did in the previous case when 140 students stormed out of the centre because of different language? The students from the same centre are from Haryana centre - Hardayal Public School  : rank - 62, 63, 65, 67. Rank 68 and 69 are from the same centre and have gotten 719 & 718 respectively marks due to grace marks as discussed above.

 

 

 

The formula used by NTA is said to be issued by the "Hon’ble Apex Court, vide its judgment dated 13.06.2018 in W.P. 551 of 2018" but they do consider the fact that this formula has been devised for computer based tests where the exact time (accurate in seconds) lost is noted. While this can be applied for offline tests too, it should be treated with careful consideration because their can never be proper verification of how much time is lost out of the exact 3 hours alloted unless a lot of resources are wasted in checking all CCTV footages in all centres across India and also, a person who lost so much time to get full 720/720 by only grace marks should be treated under a special case because of the fact that they might not have gotten full even if given total time.

Another such case is of a person from the same centre whose marks have increased from 434 to 537 (103 grace marks). His marksheet is attached :

 

 

 

 

Again, I do not condone/support harrasment of the accused.

Here the invigilator has written that the paper had started at 2:02 P.M. and without any further evidence, a 103 grace marks is really wrong unless there is actual evidence to back up the claim that significant time was lost in the centre for so many students to get such high grace marks. Even if that is the case, NTA should then check all centres for loss of time and accurately apply the above mentioned formula so that everybody is on the same level because it is really unfair that students who called out time loss in their particular centre have only got such high grace marks whereas this might be happening in other centres too but because the students were either forced by invigilators to right a time of 2:00 P.M. even though that was not the actual time of paper distribution or they did not have adequate resources and did not fully know anything about the grace marks normalisation process for time loss, they did not challenge it in High Courts due to which they lost out on grace marks even though they might have got lesser time to complete the paper. NTA should conduct fair examinations for all and equal facilities should be provided to all people irrespective of whether they have more resources and information about such matters or less. The workaround to this can be that every centre and their faculty is trained to be accurate to the second in distributing papers and OMR's and also taking it away from the students which is going to be really tough considering the accuracy needed and size of the examination and taking into human nature (giving a little extra time to solve extra questions or taking the OMR away before time causing a student's great loss in marks who is marking out his final answers). Due to all these factors and the fact that a pen-paper based examination is seriously difficult for even the students because of filling of 180 OMR bubbles which takes a lot of time away from the 3 hours given for the examination, NTA should seriously consider conducting the NEET examinations in CBT mode. 

The skewed ranks and the unfair grace marking in this years NEET was really unfair for all NEET 2024 aspirants and they should be compensated in a fair way, a re-evaluation would not help considering the time losses in some centres, but this matter should not be taken lightly (like saying "we will take care next time" when most of NEET 2024 aspirants are not going to get colleges that they deserve is not the right step) and there should be a method for bettering the NEET this year so that all aspirants get what they deserve.

In the end, I would just like to say that the constant degradation of level of examination, the grave problems, mismanagement and improper acknowledgment of such issues is causing such big entrance examinations (which have become career deciding exams with students actually commiting suicides after getting "bad" percentiles and ranks) with so much competition and so many students futures at stake, we need a really good organization conducting the papers which are helpful and ready to change and better themselves and listen to student feedback. NTA is very incompetent and if it does not acknowledge any of it's mistakes now, we do not know how it would make future examinations knowing it's problems are going unaddressed and taking risk in such a matter would not be correct. It is high time that we change the organization, so that we do not play with more careers and literal lives of students.