New Delhi: The day before the Supreme Court was set to hear several petitions regarding purported irregularities in NEET-UG, in its submission to the Supreme Court, the Centre stated on Wednesday that there was neither any indication of “mass malpractice” nor a localised set of candidates being benefitted leading to abnormal scores in NEET-UG 2024.

The centre stated that the data analytics of NEET-UG 2024 results conducted by IIT Madras and as per the findings given by the experts,  the marks distribution follows the bell-shaped curve that is witnessed in any large-scale examination indicating no abnormality.

In an additional affidavit submitted to the apex court, the Centre announced that for the academic year 2024-25, the counselling process for undergraduate seats will be conducted in four rounds starting from the third week of July.

On the other hand, the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts many of the prestigious exams also filed a separate addition affidavit in the top court and stated that it has carried out an analysis of the distribution of marks in NEET-UG 2024 at the national, state, city and centre level.

“This analysis indicates that the distribution of marks is quite normal and there seems to be no extraneous factor, which would influence the distribution of marks,” the NTA said in its affidavit, PTI reported.

A bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud is scheduled to hear on Thursday regarding the contentious NEET-UG 2024 medical entrance exam. This plea includes allegations of irregularities and malpractices in the May 5 test and seeking a direction to conduct it afresh.

On July 8 hearing, the apex court observed that the sanctity of NEET-UG 2024 has been “breached”.

In its additional affidavit filed on Wednesday, the Centre stated that under the apex court’s direction, the Ministry of Education had requested the Director of IIT Madras to conduct thorough data analytics of the results of candidates who participated in NEET-UG 2024.

“It is submitted that pursuant thereto an exhaustive and elaborate technical evaluation of the data pertaining to the NEET-UG 2024 examination was carried out by IIT Madras, using the parameters like marks distribution, city-wise and centre-wise rank distribution and candidates spread over marks range, and the following findings have been given by the experts of the IIT Madras…,” it said, PTI reported.