Now that a review panel about the NTA [National Testing Agency] has been set up, our demand should be a comprehensive inquiry into all aspects of the NTA, including the role of the UGC [University Grants Commission], and quite specifically its chairperson, Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar.
In the last post I made, we saw that the although the NTA has been allowed to use the Govt of India emblem, it is a private body/society (see registration certificate in the screenshot again) and all government departments and other bodies are advised by the Registrar of Societies to make “necessary verification (on their own) of its assets and liabilities before entering into any contract/assignment with them.”
Photo provided by author.
This should get us all to thinking about how the various bodies that the NTA conducts exams for actually entered into this contractual relationship with it every year for the last two years. Do they do their due diligence regarding its assets (which remain mysteriously not in the public domain), is a contract renewed/signed every year, and prior to that, is this decision passed by the statutory authority of the institution?
The reason why I ask this is because we know from JNU, whose admission process was destroyed using the NTA by the then-VC, MJK, who is now currently the UGC chair, that very little of due process was observed. Our colleague, and current president of the JNUTA, Moushumi Basu, has relentlessly pursued RTI enquiries since 2020 to try and determine how this sudden love for the NTA came about.
You can read a narrative of the egregious violations that took place in the [second] screenshot, extracted from a press note that the JNUTA issued on March 1, 2021, but the upshot is this: the NTA was foisted on JNU by MJK in his capacity as JNU VC by violating every ounce of its statutory procedure and despite the conflict of interest as he was also a serving Governing Body member of the NTA!
No MoU [memorandum of understanding] or contract seems to have been signed between JNU and the NTA, and even the exact sum that the NTA charged JNU to conduct the asinine examination is not known. All that JNU gained was a shortfall in revenues and significant losses in the diversity and quality of students.
Photo provided by author.
The NTA of course gained a lot in this process besides experience and the prestige, as its chief promoter, MJK, was immediately rewarded upon the completion of his term in JNU (one marked by orchestrated violence against students and teachers, and terrible maladministration) with the UGC chairpersonship.
In less than two months of his assuming office as UGC chair on February 4, 2022, the UGC notified the CUET-UG as the national entrance examination on March 21, 2022.
Photo provided by author.
So how exactly did this decision come to be made inside the UGC in the five to six weeks since Mamidala first arrived? Did the UGC commission have a meeting to discuss discuss how to implement the NEP proposals for an NTA-devised-and-administered common entrance test? Did such a meeting verify the NTA’s credentials and protocols before writing the March 21 letter to the universities?
Having spent the better part of the last 24 hours trawling through the minutes of Commission meetings that are available on the UGC site, I must confess to being utterly shocked. There were two meetings of the Commission, held in February and in March, but THERE IS NO DISCUSSION ABOUT THE NTA AND UGC-NET in any of them.
Photo provided by author.
Intrigued, I first went back to see whether this was an earlier decision that MJK was merely implementing, but that is not so. In subsequent meetings too, there is no vetting of the NTA, no guidelines are ever issued to it about selection of experts or centres, there is no mention of a contract, no discussion of its assets or liabilities. Instead, the UGC merely records its appreciation for the NTA on September 22 in ‘Any other item’, which we from JNU know is the preferred locus for MJK to record all diktats.
Photo provided by author.
In Minutes after boring Minutes, the full UGC Commission does not ever discuss the suitability of NTA as a vendor or its performance for the CUETs or UGC-NET examinations. In fact even the meeting that declares the UGC-NET as the PhD entrance examination does not record the decision as having been made by the Commission, but merely as a ratification of the action already taken (Again, very familiar to JNU peeps who continue to suffer the effects of Jaggu’s ATR long after the action has shifted to the UGC)!
Please see the last two screenshots if you are as incredulous as I am, and do note too that this 578th meeting was attended by just four members of the full commission, plus two special invitees.
The NTA would not have become the giant cesspool that it has without the UGC CETs. The UGC would not have become the septic tank it is without Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar taking over the institution. GIVEN THAT HE IS THE NTA’s PROMOTER-IN-CHIEF, ANY COMMITTEE LOOKING INTO THE NTA MUST ALSO EXAMINE THE ROLE OF MAMIDALA JAGADESH KUMAR AND HIS UGC.
Ayesha Kidwai is a professor of linguistics at JNU. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2024.
This post first appeared on the author’s Facebook profile and has been lightly edited for clarity and style.