The NTA gave this task to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, which submitted a report using parameters such as marks distribution, city wise and centre wise rank distribution and candidates spread over marks range.
It is to be noted here that three Directors of IITs, in their ex-officio capacity, are members of the NTA's Governing Body.
Through their study, IIT Madras concluded that since the marks distribution follows a bell-shaped curve, there is no abnormality.
“There is neither any indication of mass malpractice nor a localised set of candidates being benefitted, leading to abnormal scores,” it claimed.
What is the correlation between the number of toppers from a city and malpractices reported from a city?
In order to ascertain if the cases of malpractices and paper leaks were localised incidents or more widespread, the Supreme Court had asked NTA if it was possible to identify suspicious cases using data analytics by an expert government agency.
The NTA gave this task to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, which submitted a report using parameters such as marks distribution, city wise and centre wise rank distribution and candidates spread over marks range. It is to be noted here that three Directors of IITs, in their ex-officio capacity, are members of the NTA's Governing Body.
Through their study, IIT Madras concluded that since the marks distribution follows a bell-shaped curve, there is no abnormality. “There is neither any indication of mass malpractice nor a localised set of candidates being benefitted, leading to abnormal scores,” it claimed.
However, on analysing the data shared by the institute, the following questions emerge:
1. What is the correlation between the number of toppers from a city and malpractices reported from a city?
The IIT Madras report noted that "only two” candidates scored the top-100 ranks from Patna (Bihar), where there were allegations of paper leak and that similar trends were seen while analysing the top-500, top-1000 and top-5000 ranks.
