The Supreme Court has directed the National Testing Agency – the under-fire central body responsible for the conduct of the NEET-UG test – to “rectify deficiencies in the exam system”.

The court told the NTA to avoid “flip-flops” in the context of the NEET exam, which was held on May 5 but ran into trouble a month later, when results were declared. Such “flip-flops” – in a national test for aspiring medical professionals – do not serve students’ interests, the court said.

By this six to one majority ruling, a bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices B R Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra and S C Sharma overruled the 2004 judgment of a five-judge bench in EV Chinnaiah case which had said SCs were a homogeneous group and could not be sub-categorised.