Who vetted NEET's biometric verifiers? NTA says it didn't
The people responsible for verifying NEET candidates were among those arrested in the alleged dummy-candidate racket, while the Testing Agency (NTA) has confirmed that it
The people responsible for verifying NEET candidates were among those arrested in the alleged dummy-candidate racket, while the Testing Agency (NTA) has confirmed that it does not directly deal with or vet the third-party vendors engaged for biometric verification. A Right to Information (RTI) response also confirms that the NTA is conducting an inquiry into biometric-related irregularities. Every candidate who walked into an exam hall for the NEET-UG re-test this year was told the same thing: place your finger on the scanner, and the system will know if you're really you. Read Full Story India Today wanted to know who was actually standing behind that scanner, and who, if anyone, had checked their credentials before handing them that responsibility. The RTI, filed with the NTA, reveals a chain of outsourcing that raises questions about who was responsible for the people conducting biometric verification at the ground level, even as Bihar Police allege that verification staff were involved in a dummy-candidate racket at three exam centres.
THE RACKET BIHAR POLICE UNCOVERED According to a news report dated June 24, the NEET-UG re-test, held after the original May 3 exam was cancelled over a paper-leak controversy, was meant to be the clean version. Instead, Bihar Police said they had busted a "dummy candidate" racket operating out of three centres in Lakhisarai district: KRK College, Kendriya Vidyalaya and Hasanpur High School. Thirty people have been arrested so far, according to the report. Nine are alleged to be "dummy candidates" — men already enrolled in MBBS and other professional courses who, police allege, appeared for the exam in place of genuine aspirants. One is a genuine candidate accused of arranging his own stand-in, while two others are alleged accomplices. Another 18 are biometric verification staff — the very personnel responsible for checking candidates' identities before they entered the examination process. According to the report, Lakhisarai SP Prerna Kumar named two fourth-year MBBS students as central to the operation: Arpit Singh of Muzaffarpur, allegedly the link between an inter-state "solver gang" and paying candidates, and Mayank Kashyap of Vaishali, a fourth-year MBBS student allegedly working with the biometric team.
To get past the checks, the accused allegedly used forged documents and fake Aadhaar cards as identity proof. WHAT OUR RTI FOUND The arrests raised an obvious question: who hired these biometric staff, and what checks were carried out before they were deployed? India Today put that question to the NTA directly. Its response revealed a chain of outsourcing that ends well short of the exam hall. NTA said it has a Memorandum of Understanding with EdCIL (India) Limited, a central government company, which is responsible for engaging and checking the vendors involved in biometric verification. Asked what due diligence NTA conducted before these agencies were engaged, the NTA said that since the MoU is between NTA and EdCIL, it "does not directly deal with any third-party vendors." In other words, the biometric verification personnel deployed at exam centres are engaged through an outsourced chain rather than directly by NTA.
The BriefWire