The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to annul this year’s NEET-UG exam saying only 150-odd candidates had benefited from the question paper leak and that scrapping the entire exam would affect the remaining successful students.

A three-judge bench said the probe so far by Bihar police’s economic offences wing, and later the CBI, suggested the paper was leaked in Hazaribagh and Patna and that 155 candidates from exam centres in these two places had gained from the fraud.

“However, if the probe reveals an increased number of beneficiaries, then action shall be taken against any such student at any stage notwithstanding the completion of counselling process,” the bench of Chief JusticeD.Y. Chandrachud, JusticeJ.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra said.

“No student who is revealed to have been in this fraud or a beneficiary would be entitled to claim any vested right in continuation of admission.”

The undergraduate medical entrance exam, held on May 5, has been vitiated by allegations of a paper leak and other anomalies, such as excessive grace marks awarded to hundreds for alleged time loss and a large number of candidates scoring full marks.

But after a marathon, four-day hearing, the bench rejected a batch of PILs that had sought cancellation of the exam. The apex court said it had independently scrutinised the data placed on record by the National Testing Agency, which conducted the exam.

The bench said it had found that “at the present stage there is absence of material on record to lead to conclusion that result of the exam is vitiated or that there is a systemic breach of the sanctity of the exam”.

“(The) data on record is not indicative of a systemic leak of the question paper which would indicate a disruption of the sanctity of the exam.”

The bench noted that it was possible to distinguish the tainted students from the untainted.

It said that directing a retest would have serious consequences for the tens of thousands of successful and untainted candidates from among the 24 lakh who had taken the exam.

Besides, scrapping the exam would disrupt the admission schedule, which would have a cascading effect on the course of medical education, impact the availability of qualified doctors in the future, and seriously hurt candidates from the marginalised groups who had qualified for reserved seats.

“Thus, we are of the view that ordering cancellation of the entire exam is not… justified on application of settled principles propounded by this court on the basis of material on record,” the bench said.

As for the other controversies, the Centre had cancelled the grace marks awarded to 1,563 candidates and announced a retest for those willing to take it from among them.

This year’s NEET-UG was held at 4,750 centres across 571 Indian and 14 overseas cities, with 108,000 seats up for grabs.

The apex court announced it would later pass a detailed order.