Latest NEET fiasco raises serious questions about NTA’s capacity to safeguard sanctity of exams

On May 3, more than 22 lakh students sat for one of the most consequential examinations in the country — the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), the gateway to roughly 1.3 lakh MBBS seats in India’s medical colleges. For them, the brutally competitive test was the culmination of painstaking preparation as well as financial and emotional investment. Less than 10 days later, they suffered a devastating disappointment after the examination was cancelled because investigators reportedly found extensive overlap between the actual paper and a pre-circulated “guess paper”. Multiple suspects have reportedly been detained, and the Centre has handed the case to the CBI. But reducing this episode to a mere law-and-order breach understates the scale of institutional failure. It is an indictment of the National Testing Agency (NTA), the body entrusted with conducting some of the country’s most high-stakes examinations. Created in 2017 to professionalise testing, the NTA was mandated to standardise procedures and eliminate the inconsistencies of fragmented state-level systems. Instead, its record has been steadily marred by paper leaks and recurring allegations of irregularities. The latest NEET fiasco — the second major controversy surrounding the medical entrance examination in two years — has raised serious questions about the agency’s capacity to safeguard the sanctity of examinations on which thousands of youngsters stake their futures.

Conducting an examination of this scale is undeniably a logistical challenge — this year’s NEET was conducted across nearly 5,500 centres in more than 550 cities. The NTA has highlighted its use of technology-driven safeguards. But the alleged circulation of papers before the examination shows that a foolproof system is elusive. After the 2024 NEET controversy, the Centre constituted a committee headed by former ISRO chairperson K Radhakrishnan to suggest measures to improve the NTA’s working. The agency is yet to completely implement the digital-first approach underlined by the committee and has dithered in acting on its most meaningful recommendation — improving accountability at all steps of the examination process. The NTA depends heavily on private examination centre operators and logistics service providers, even after several paper leak episodes — including that of the NEET in 2024 in Jharkhand — have underlined the links between these vendors and the coaching industry. At the same time, the agency has evaded institutional responsibility for failures by directing blame at external operators.

The latest NEET leak is a warning. To reap the demographic dividend, the state must ensure the credibility of institutions that shape young lives. Compromised examinations are unacceptable. Fixing this will require, first, assigning accountability.