15 of the 39 Posts in NTA Remain Vacant: Govt

All 24 employees are on deputation from other institutions and are not hired directly by the NTA itself.

The Wire Staff

All 24 employees are on deputation from other institutions and are not hired directly by the NTA itself.

15 of the 39 posts in nta remain vacant govt

SFI members stage a protest against the National Testing Agency (NTA) over the alleged paper leak concerns following the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2026 examination, at Cotton University, in Guwahati, Assam, May 16, 2026. Photo: PTI.

New Delhi: As the youth movement against the NEET paper leak issue continues across the country, Union Minister of State for Education Sukanta Majumdar told the Rajya Sabha this week that 15 out of 39 sanctioned posts in the National Testing Agency (NTA) remain vacant.

In a written reply submitted on Wednesday (July 22, 2026) in response to a question from Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) MP V. Sivadasan, Majumdar revealed that the exam body currently has just 24 employees. All these employees are on deputation from other institutions and are not hired directly by the NTA itself.

The agency majorly relies on external hiring.

According to the minister's reply, 73 people are working on contract, among them a general manager of communication along with various senior advisors and consultants, while another 124 workers have been outsourced to handle everything from data analysis and legal matters to basic housekeeping.

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Sixteen additional posts at the director and joint director level have been sanctioned under the Central Staffing Scheme but the government is filling them through deputation rather than hiring permanent workforce.

“The NTA is responsible for conducting high-stakes university entrance, medical, engineering, and fellowship examinations. Running such a critical centralised body without a single dedicated, permanent cadre is a massive administrative failure that directly impacts students,” Sivadasan said in a public statement.

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“While the revenue including the examination fee collections more than doubled within five years, revenue figures for the subsequent fiscal years (2024-25 and 2025-26) were not disclosed in the response,” he added.

Speaking about the ongoing protests, CPI(M) MP pointed out that left-wing student groups and parties have been sounding alarm over the NTA's "unscientific and commercially driven model" ever since it was created.

This article went live on July twenty-fourth, two thousand twenty six, at nine minutes past two in the afternoon.

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