The National Testing Agency Has Failed its Exams

New Delhi: For days, 18-year-old Maithili Ashok Sonwane struggled to sleep. She had just completed her Class 12 examinations and appeared for India’s National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) to secure a seat as a medical student. At home in Gondegaon village in Maharashtra's Latur district, the uncertainty surrounding NEET had begun to consume her.

Like millions of Indian students, Maithili had organised her life around the NEET and her dream of becoming a doctor. Nearly 22 lakh students in India compete for around 1.3 lakh medical seats in nearly 800 medical colleges. According to her family, she had prepared seriously and walked out of the examination hall believing she had done well.

However, on May 12, 2026, the National Testing Agency (NTA), an autonomous body under the Union Ministry of Education which conducts the examination, announced that the NEET had been cancelled amid allegations of a paper leak.

Within days, her parents saw a desolation in their 18-year-old daughter. A re-examination was announced for June 21. On social media, rumours floated about tougher question papers, shifting examination patterns and the prospect of having to start over. Her father, 50-year-old Ashok Vitthal Sonwane, said that the cancellation had left her under severe mental stress.

In less than a week, Maithili’s body was found hanging from a tree near her family's farm on May 16. In a formal complaint to the police, her father held NEET responsible for his daughter's death.

Maithili's death was not the only tragedy reported in the aftermath of the examination's cancellation. Across the country, several aspirants struggling with the uncertainty surrounding NEET's future were reported to have taken their own lives. In Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri, 21-year-old Ritik Mishra reportedly took the drastic step after discovering that the examination would have to be repeated. He had already attempted the NEET thrice.

Similar stories emerged from other parts of the country. In Delhi's Azadpur, 20-year-old Anshika Pandey, who had missed admission to a medical college by just four marks the previous year and was appearing for NEET once again, died amid the uncertainty triggered by the cancellation. Hundreds of kilometres away in Rajasthan's Sikar district, Pradeep Meghwal, a 22-year-old aspirant who had devoted the last three years to preparing for the medical entrance test, died by suicide after the examination was scrapped. In Goa, a 17-year-old student left behind a note describing the immense strain of juggling preparation for competitive examinations while trying to pursue his passion for hockey.

NEET not neat

In 2016, NEET was introduced as a single, standardised entrance examination that aimed to replace a fragmented admission system and curb corruption in medical education. However, a decade later, the examination has become one of the most contested spaces in Indian education.

It is conducted by the NTA, an autonomous, self-sustained testing organisation established in 2017 under the Ministry of Education. Apart from the NEET, the NTA also conducts over 15 entrance and other competitive exams including the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), National Eligibility Test (NET) and Common University Entrance Test (CUET).

The NTA is headed by Pradeep Kumar Joshi, a professor from Uttrakhand known to be close to senior BJP leaders Murli Manohar Joshi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Joshi served as chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission from 2006 to 2011, and later headed the Chhattisgarh Public Service Commission. His tenure in examination-related institutions overlapped with the period during which the Vyapam scandal emerged as one of India's biggest recruitment and admissions controversies.

According to a right to information (RTI) report, Joshi’s appointment as MPPSC chairman in 2006 came after a recommendation from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Moreover, in 2009, while Joshi was chairperson at MPPSC, discrepancies had emerged in the direct recruitment of first-class gazetted professors in the state government’s Higher Education Department. The matter had even reached the Madhya Pradesh high court.

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

Education remains a concurrent subject under the Constitution, with both the Union and state governments empowered to legislate on it. Yet over the past decade, entrance admissions have been progressively centralised through examinations administered by a single agency. States such as Tamil Nadu have repeatedly argued that a uniform national test cannot account for India's vast educational inequalities, differences in school systems and regional priorities. The Narendra Modi regime, however, has paid little heed to these concerns – and given the NTA the authority to decide the futures of India’s students.

This paper leak has also exposed a striking contradiction in India's public conversation on examinations. Through initiatives such as ‘Pareeksha Pe Charcha’, Modi has repeatedly urged students not to allow examinations to define their lives and to approach them without excessive stress. His book, Exam Warriors, is also supposed to serve the same purpose. Yet students today face more uncertainty and pressure than ever before – and the NEET has become an emblem of that. For millions of students, years of schooling, lakhs of rupees in coaching expenses and entire family aspirations are increasingly compressed into performance on a single day. The result is an examination that carries extraordinary consequences for success and failure.

The pre-NTA era

Before 2017-18, India's major entrance examinations were conducted by different bodies. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducted the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), later NEET, as well as the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admissions to institutions such as the IITs, NITs and IIITs, while many universities conducted their own entrance tests.

Since 1988, the AIPMT had been used for admissions to the 15% All India Quota seats in government medical colleges and some other institutions. Alongside it, students often had to appear for multiple state PMTs, private college entrance tests, deemed university examinations and minority institution exams, sometimes sitting for five, ten or more entrance tests in a single year.

To address this fragmentation, the Medical Council of India proposed NEET around 2009-10 under the idea of "one nation, one entrance examination". The push for a common test gained momentum amid growing concerns over examination corruption. The Vyapam recruitment and admissions scam emerged as a national scandal in 2013, followed by the cancellation of AIPMT in 2015 after investigators uncovered organised cheating using mobile phones and electronic devices.

Although the Supreme Court struck down NEET in 2013, holding that regulators could not impose a common entrance examination on all institutions, it reversed its position in 2016 by recalling the judgment and allowing NEET to become the nationwide gateway to medical admissions. The reversal was unusual, with the court observing that "there was no discussion among the members of the Bench before pronouncement of the judgment".

The AIPMT was subsequently absorbed into NEET in 2016. The scale of the examination soon expanded dramatically, growing from roughly six-seven lakh AIPMT candidates to more than 20 lakh NEET applicants. At the same time, JEE, UGC-NET and other national entrance examinations were becoming larger and more complex.

Arguing that CBSE should no longer manage these massive tests, the Modi government approved the NTA in November 2017 as part of a broader push towards centralised national systems.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan addresses a press conference on the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination issue in New Delhi on May 15, 2026. Photo: PTI.

A clouded agency, a clouded exam

While the 2026 NEET cancellation is the first complete scrapping of the examination since NEET replaced the AIPMT in 2016, the test had already faced a major credibility crisis in 2024. That year, allegations of paper leaks emerged from Bihar and Gujarat, while public outrage centred on unusual result patterns. An unprecedented 67 candidates secured perfect scores of 720, and more than 1,500 students were awarded grace marks for loss of examination time at certain centres. The controversy sparked nationwide protests, legal challenges and a broader debate about the integrity of India's largest medical entrance examination.

In the wake of the NEET-UG 2024 controversy, the Union government had constituted a seven-member committee headed by former ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan to review the functioning of the NTA and recommend reforms. The committee submitted 101 recommendations, including shifting major examinations towards online or hybrid formats, introducing encrypted digital transmission of question papers, strengthening biometric verification, reducing dependence on private examination centres and restructuring the NTA's governance and accountability mechanisms.

However, by the time the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak surfaced, only a handful of these recommendations had reportedly been implemented, primarily Aadhaar-based biometric authentication and greater coordination with state and district authorities. Several key reforms aimed at securing question paper distribution and overhauling examination infrastructure remained pending, leading to questions on whether lessons from the 2024 crisis had been acted upon.

The leak

The 2026 leak crisis began before May 3, when lakhs of students across India appeared for the highly competitive medical entrance system. Even before students entered examination halls, investigators found the NEET paper had already begun circulating through an organised network across India on WhatsApp and Telegram.

According to the Rajasthan Police's investigation, the paper was allegedly in circulation for nearly 45 hours before the examination and had reached several students in Sikar, on Jaipur's outskirts, and in nearby coaching hubs.

The leak first came to light late on May 2, when a medical student from Sikar studying in Kerala allegedly forwarded the paper to his father, a hostel owner back home. The student had received a handwritten "guess paper" on WhatsApp and forwarded it to his father, thinking it might help coaching students at his hostel.

His father then shared the document with a local chemistry teacher. After the exam, they compared it to the actual question paper and discovered that over 130 questions matched exactly. The .pdf file contained approximately 60 pages, having 90 chemistry questions and seven to eight pages of biology questions.

Alarmed by what he had received, the father and teacher approached both the police and the NTA, claiming that a large number of students had access to this question bank that appeared unusually accurate. His identity, along with the names of his son and the teacher, was withheld by police and investigators for safety reasons.

It was the teacher’s letter that led to the NTA alerting the central agencies, with the matter eventually leading to an investigation by the Special Operations Group of Rajasthan and then the CBI.

“I am willing to submit my mobile for forensic investigation and have full proof, considering the magnitude and importance of the NEET examination and the impact that such acts may have on the lives of the students,” the teacher wrote in his complaint, accessed by The Indian Express.

Photo: PTI/Tanmay Pande

As police began pulling at the threads, the alleged leak network appeared to stretch far beyond a single district. The trail led first from Sikar to Jaipur's Jamwaramgarh area, where two men were allegedly found to have purchased the paper for Rs 15 lakh before distributing it further through local contacts.

Their statements reportedly pointed investigators towards Haryana, where a medical student suspected of being part of an organised leak syndicate was detained.

The probe then expanded hundreds of kilometres away to Maharashtra, where authorities recovered a handwritten copy of the paper from a man in Nashik, who in turn identified an alleged accomplice in Pune.

By the time Rajasthan's Special Operations Group formally took over the investigation on May 10, the case had already evolved from a local complaint into a multi-state probe spanning Rajasthan, Haryana and Maharashtra. Within days, arrests began mounting, reinforcing investigators' belief that the leak was not an isolated breach but part of a coordinated network operating across state lines.

Evading accountability

Since the leak of the 2026 exam paper, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested 13 people so far across the country. Most of the arrested accused are linked to the coaching industry and medical professionals spread across major coaching hubs in Delhi, Jaipur, Gurugram, Nashik, Pune, Latur and Ahilyanagar.

Amid the fallout, the Union government assured the Supreme Court that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was personally monitoring the situation and that additional safeguards had been introduced for the NEET re-test. A proposal has been floated to deploy Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft to securely transport the fresh sets of question papers.

However, despite these assurances, widespread protests continue across the country. In fact, as a response to NEET leaks, the Cockroach Janata Party, a parody of the Bharatiya Janata Party, went viral on social media. Within days, it gained over 350,000 sign-ups and over 20 million followers on Instagram while demanding the resignation of the Union education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. Despite outrage, no senior NTA official appears to have been formally removed, suspended or asked to resign following the paper leak controversy. Pradhan too remains in his position, despite the numerous failures of India’s exam system this year.

This lack of accountability is not new – the NTA’s failures have been noted even in parliament. The parliamentary standing committee on education scrutinised the NTA in 2025, after the 2024 leaks, and summoned Joshi and other senior officials. The committee found that in 2024 alone, out of the 14 competitive examinations conducted by the NTA, at least five faced major issues. Three examinations including UGC-NET, CSIR-NET and NEET-PG had to be postponed, one examination NEET-UG saw instances of paper leaks. CUET for both UG and PG saw results postponed. In JEE Main 2025 held in January 2025, at least 12 questions had to be withdrawn due to errors noted in the final answer key of the engineering entrance exam.

Students' Federation of India (SFI) members take out a protest rally against the National Testing Agency (NTA) over the alleged paper leak concerns following the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2026 examination, in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Thursday, May 14, 2026. Photo: PTI

The committee also raised red flags that blacklisted firms were involved in setting question papers, conducting examinations and evaluating answer sheets. The committee noted that there is currently no comprehensive mechanism to prevent such companies from re-entering the examination ecosystem under different jurisdictions as there is no national blacklist.

The committee was headed by former Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh, who was detained by police on May 30 while leading a protest against the NEET paper leak controversy in Bhopal.

It further found that the NTA collected an estimated Rs 3,512.98 crore, while it had spent Rs 3,064.77 crore on the conduct of examinations. It was sitting on a surplus of Rs 448 crore over the preceding six years. The report said, “The Committee recommends that this corpus should be used to build the agency’s capabilities to conduct tests itself, or to strengthen regulatory and monitoring capabilities for its vendors.”

Why NEET?

​NEET has concentrated the aspirations of millions of students into a high-stakes contest and fuelled a vast coaching industry worth thousands of crores. This coaching industry has deepened inequalities between urban and rural students while compelling thousands of families to spend lakhs of rupees in pursuit of a medical seat, often transforming cities like Kota into hubs of educational migration.

Niyati Chitkara, head of Chitkara schools, said, "The problem with NEET is not merely the paper leak but the philosophy underlying the examination itself.” Chitkara holds a doctorate in student assessment, with a focus on Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation. Referring to organisations such as the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers examinations including the SAT, she argued that India should study international testing models that employ sophisticated digital safeguards.

She said that the purpose of any assessment should be to maximise learning and accurately identify the qualities required for a profession. She said, “An examination should test what students have genuinely learned and should itself be a meaningful learning experience. Standardised entrance tests such as NEET primarily measure a candidate's ability to perform under specific examination conditions. Such tests may capture a certain kind of cognitive ability, but they fail to assess emotional intelligence, values, communication skills, empathy and other qualities essential to professions like medicine.”

Drawing comparisons with international models, she pointed to the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) in the United States, which was originally designed as an aptitude test rather than a pure knowledge examination. She said, “Even universities that rely on SAT scores increasingly evaluate students through a broader set of indicators, including academic records, extracurricular achievements and personal portfolios.” Medical education, she argued, should move in a similar direction. She said, “Selecting future doctors solely on the basis of a single high-stakes examination ignores years of school performance and overlooks characteristics that cannot be captured through multiple-choice questions. A student's Class 12 performance, sustained academic record, co-curricular achievements and demonstrated values may provide a more reliable picture than a single test taken on one day.”

Srishti Jaswal is an independent journalist.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.