Supreme Court jurisprudence expands state duty to minimise institutional harm to students

The constitutional framework governing education and public employment in India rests on Article 14 (equality before law), Article 16 (equality of opportunity in public employment), and Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty). Over successive decades, the Supreme Court has progressively expanded Article 21 beyond mere physical survival to encompass dignity, livelihood, and — more recently — mental health. This expansive reading draws on the Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India principle that the right to life must be interpreted broadly and in consonance with human dignity.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), established in 2017 under the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, was designed to centralise and standardise high-stakes national examinations including NEET-UG, JEE (Main), and UGC-NET. NEET-UG functions as the single gateway for admissions to MBBS, BDS, and allied programmes across government and private medical colleges, drawing over 22 lakh aspirants annually. The centralisation was intended to reduce fragmentation and corruption in state-level tests, but it also concentrated systemic risk — a single institutional failure now affects millions simultaneously. The Right to Education Act, 2009 reinforces the constitutional guarantee of equitable access to education, making any compromise in examination integrity a matter of fundamental rights.

The broader social context is equally important. For a large section of Indian society — particularly those from economically marginalised and reserved-category backgrounds — access to higher education and public employment through competitive examinations is not merely an aspiration but a constitutional promise embedded in the reservation framework under Articles 15(4) and 16(4). The state, in this relationship, is not conferring a favour but discharging a constitutional obligation.