Failed tests: National Testing Agency needs better preparation for exams

The cancellation of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (Neet-UG) 2026 after allegations of a paper leak reflects a deeper institutional crisis in the governance of national entrance examinations. Investigators reportedly found that over 100 questions matched a circulating “guess paper”, forcing the National Testing Agency (NTA) to cancel the examination and order a retest for 2.3 million candidates. The NTA was established in 2017 as an autonomous professional testing body meant to create a transparent and scientific examination ecosystem of global standards. However, the agency has increasingly found itself associated with paper leaks, technical glitches, delayed results, and logistical confusion across various examinations.

 

The stakes are exceptionally high in such examinations. Neet determines admission to roughly 120,000 MBBS (bachelor of medicine, bachelor of surgery) seats, with over 2 million students competing for them. This extreme demand-supply imbalance has fuelled a vast coaching economy and intensified pressure on students and families. Middle-class and lower-middle-class households often invest their life savings in expensive coaching and spend on associated requirements. Thousands of Indian students are also compelled to seek education abroad because of the shortage of affordable domestic seats. The government’s recent announcement on adding 75,000 medical seats over five years is, therefore, necessary not only from a health care perspective but also to reduce the disproportionate burden attached to one examination. More needs to be done in this regard.

 

The problem, however, goes beyond seat shortages. The immediate policy question is whether excessively centralised examinations involving enormous numbers across wide geographies are administratively sustainable without corresponding institutional capacity. Recent reports surrounding the Common University Entrance Test Undergraduate (CUET-UG) 2026 illustrate the strain. Students have complained of compressed schedules, back-to-back papers without breaks, distant examination centres, and fatigue from long computer-based testing sessions. Standardisation may have improved uniformity, but it has also concentrated risk within a single technological and administrative system. Following the Neet 2024 controversy, the Union government constituted a high-level committee headed by K Radhakrishnan, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, to scrutinise the examination system. It made 101 recommendations. Yet reports suggest that only some of the recommendations have been implemented. The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, which prescribes penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine up to ₹1 crore, has also failed to deter malpractice.

 

What is required is institutional restructuring of the NTA itself with professional staffing, stronger technological safeguards, independent audits, decentralised operational capacity, and transparent accountability. Equally important is the time-bound implementation of the committee’s recommendations, including better monitoring, encrypted digital delivery of question papers, standardised testing centres, stronger CCTV (closed-circuit television) surveillance, continuous staff training, and better stakeholder coordination. The stakes for Indian students are high because this deepens anxiety and distrust, and even contributes to suicides. Restoring credibility to the examination system is, therefore, not merely an administrative necessity but a social imperative.