NEET-PG Question Disclosure: Supreme Court Asks NBEMS to Explain

The Supreme Court on 2 November asked the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to file written submissions on why NEET-PG questions should not be disclosed to candidates after the exam. A bench of Justice PS Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe was hearing a writ petition by the Democratic Medical Association and adjourned the matter, according to LiveLaw’s report of the hearing.

What NBEMS Told the Bench

Senior Advocate Shikhil Suri, for the petitioners, said NBEMS discloses the master set and its answers, but for the other question sets it releases only question IDs. NBEMS argued that the postgraduate question bank is small and is a national asset, and that publishing questions every year would let future papers be predicted or quoted.

Justice Narasimha asked, “What happens to transparency?” and observed that practices in other countries are not a model for India, LiveLaw reported. The court wants NBEMS to explain, in writing, why disclosure would hurt the integrity of the exam.

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Plea Filed After the August Exam

NEET-PG 2026 was held on 30 August and results came out on 24 September. The petition, on which the court issued notice on 15 October, asks for each candidate’s actual questions and options in the order they saw them, their recorded responses, the correct answers and marks. It also seeks a time-bound way to object to individual questions, reviewed by a subject-expert committee, and wants NBEMS’s 1 October notice quashed to the extent that it limits disclosure to numerical IDs and marks. That petition was tagged with other pending petitions on structural issues in the National Testing Agency.

Scores and ranks from this exam will be used for counselling and admissions, which is why candidates have pressed for a way to check them. Earlier Supreme Court hearings on NEET-PG answer keys are covered in IPB’s Daily Updates, and the court’s recent remarks on transparency in public processes appear in the Aruna Roy voter awareness case.

NBEMS Statement Is the Next Step

No next hearing date has been reported. Until NBEMS files its submissions and the court lists the case again, the current disclosure policy stays in place.

Source: Based on reporting by LiveLaw and LiveLaw (15 October hearing).

Image: Wikimedia Commons.