In India, entrance examinations carry huge emotional weight and are a topic for household talk. Students prepare for years and wait for the exam day. Then, if an exam is cancelled due to paper-leak allegations—as in the case of the 2026 NEET-UG—it can cause distress and disappointment among students and parents. Students who prepared honestly deserve sympathy and reassurance. As a nation, their future remains our first concern.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) annually conducts several competitive exams and other specialised tests for different ministries, regulators and institutions. JEE Main serves engineering, architecture and planning admissions; NEET-UG serves medical, dental, AYUSH and allied health admissions; CUET, UG and PG, serve participating universities; UGC-NET supports research fellowships, assistant professorships and PhD admission pathways.
So, the NTA is not conducting one kind of test alone. It is managing a broad national testing ecosystem with different clients, purposes, formats and candidate groups. When you include all exams, the annual participation in NTA-conducted exams can reasonably be beyond one crore test-events. It involves multiple languages, thousands of centres, varied geographies, urban and rural participation and high-stakes ranking.
The present NEET-UG episode should not be seen as evidence that every NTA exam is structurally unreliable. Since its formation, the NTA has cancelled exams twice—for UGC-NET in June 2024 and the NEET-UG 2026. The 2024 exam was cancelled after inputs suggested that its integrity may have been compromised and it was conducted afresh later. The Supreme Court recorded that a leak had taken place at Hazaribagh and Patna, but it did not order cancellation of the entire exam because the material before it did not show a widespread or systemic leak.
NEET-UG 2026 was scheduled at over 5,432 exam centres across 565 cities, including 551 Indian cities and 14 foreign cities. At that scale, one cannot ignore the vulnerabilities of a one-day pen-and-paper exam with more than 22 lakh candidates. The question papers have to be prepared, printed, stored, transported, opened, distributed to the students in every centre. Every additional physical step creates a possible point of breach. In such an environment, unscrupulous actors need to attack just one weak link.
Now, the NTA has been conducting large computer-based tests (CBTs) for JEE Main, UGC-NET, CUET-UG and CUET-PG for years. Though a CBT is not free from risk, it removes the long physical chain of printing, storage and transportation of question papers. It permits encrypted delivery, controlled access, session-wise scheduling, audit trails and quicker containment when a local disruption occurs.
The experience of multi-session CBT exams shows another advantage. If an incident is confined to one centre or one shift, the affected session can be
isolated, reviewed and reconducted without disturbing all other candidates. This ability to contain problems locally is important as the number of students affected is small and manageable. CBT also allows better monitoring through digital audit trails, computer logs, identity checks and post-exam analytics.
The K Radhakrishnan Committee, set up to recommend reform of national entrance tests, offers a practical roadmap. It advised for multi-session testing when registered participants exceed 2 lakh and said the methodology of normalisation should be well defined, documented and communicated transparently. The committee also recommended a computer-assisted pen-and-paper test model. In this hybrid system, CBT-like processes would be used until encrypted question papers reach confidential servers at testing centres. Printing would then take place securely at the centre, reducing risks in the printing, storage and transportation chains. It also suggested a variant where the question paper is delivered through CBT while optical mark recognition sheets are used for answers.
The committee further recommended a gradual migration toward computer-adaptive testing (CAT) as a long-term reform. This can improve measurement quality because each candidate receives questions matched to their demonstrated ability. This approach makes assessment more precise and efficient. It also reduces the value of leaked question papers, as different candidates may receive different item sequences drawn from a secure question bank. The final direction, however, should be a carefully planned transition towards full CBT in multiple sessions.
Students and parents worry that different sessions may not be equal in difficulty. To address this, normalisation is a scientific statistical method used to create fairness when a large exam is conducted in multiple sessions. Since no two question papers can be perfectly identical, it reduces the imbalance that may arise from a slightly easier or tougher paper. The NTA has already used normalisation in exams such as JEE Main and CUET. If the method is clearly documented and publicly communicated, it can strengthen confidence by ensuring that rank reflects performance, not luck.
The lesson from the current crisis is clear. India does need stronger national testing capacity—an organisation like the NTA for conducting large-scale tests. Otherwise, it will lead to fragmentation, inconsistency and greater uncertainty for students. The priority now is to redesign NEET so that we are not forced into an all-or-nothing dilemma. We must work toward making NTA operations more secure, more resilient and more student-friendly.
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar | Chairman, Board of Governors, IIM Calcutta and Former Chairman, University Grants Commission
(Views are personal)