He also said more high scorers and more non-coaching candidates cracking the exam was due to concerted efforts of the last three years to make the difficulty level of NEET similar to Class 12 board exam instead of setting “tough” questions.
NTA conducted NEET-UG on May 5 and announced results on June 4. A little over 24 lakh aspirants registered for the test of which 23.3 lakh appeared and 13.6 lakh qualified.
“There is no evidence of paper leak in NEET-UG. Corruption allegations against NTA are baseless. It conducts exams for over 5 million school students annually, along with higher education exams,” Pradhan said.
He said NEET-UG results indicated that there was a significant increase in the number of students qualifying and scoring high marks from govt-run schools and from rural areas who didn’t attend coaching classes.
Without naming coaching centres, Pradhan said, “Even in JEE (Advanced), students of rural areas and Navodaya schools have improved their scores and are among the rank holders. They didn’t get any additional coaching. So, you can guess who has impacted them (coaching centres) adversely.”
On the controversy over grace marks, the minister said NTA was evolving. “We are not saying everything is foolproof. This is an evolutionary process and we are making our tests more scientific,” he said.
