New Delhi, Oct 8 (IANS): The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice on a plea seeking direction to the National Board of Examinations (NBE) to release the question paper and answer key for the candidates for NEET-PG 2021.

Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing the petitioners, contended before a bench headed by justice D.Y. Chandrachud that this is a very serious issue, and elaborated that there are 16 lakh under-graduates who appear for NEET-UG, while only about 1.75 lakh are doctors who can take the NEET-PG.

"We are not allowed to keep the question papers. We are not shown the answer sheets. The answer key is not uploaded. We have no idea how many questions were right, how many were wrong," he argued.

The plea argued that the authorities withholding this information from the candidates are arbitrary and legally flawed, and as a consequence they are not left with any means to compare their responses with the answer key.

The bench, also comprising justice B.V. Nagarathna, noted that the question bank for PG is very limited, while for UG it is very large and disclosing it would affect the sanctity of the examination.

Justice Nagarathna added, "Then there will also be a debate on whether an answer is correct and there will be a challenge to that if the answer key is uploaded."

Sankaranarayanan, however, argued that this should not absolve the authorities from maintaining some transparency in the process and ensuring a method for revaluation. After hearing the arguments in the matter, the bench said: "Let us issue a notice and at least see what the other side has to say."