BENGALURU: The sudden yet not unexpected cancellation of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) (Undergraduate) 2026, as informed by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on Tuesday (May 13), has left aspirants from Bengaluru and Karnataka in a state of dismay and disillusionment. Around 1.45 lakh aspirants from the state had appeared for the examination this year.
The cancellation followed reports of the exam paper being leaked, allegedly as early as May 1, with the exam being held two days later on May 3.
For a 19-year-old student from Bengaluru, this was her first time appearing for the examination, which turned out to be a disappointing ordeal. She had overprepared, and consequently performed significantly better than her expectations, further compounding the present disappointment. “I attended coaching classes for a year after graduating from school at the Brilliant Study Center in Thiruvananthapuram. The first six months of the course covered the syllabus that was expected to be asked in the examination while the rest of the year focused on practice tests and regular mock tests. The questions that were covered in the mock tests were highly intellectual and rigorous, due to which, the actual examination seemed easy for me. I hope there is no re-examination,” she said.
For faculty members of coaching institutions in Bengaluru, the day materialised into a day of shouldering the collective disappointment and hopelessness of scores of their students. Brahmaiah Mannam, the dean at Vision Academy in Bengaluru, said that some of the students he spoke to had spoken to him in conditions of extreme and severe distress. “They are very disappointed. They were relieved after the exam, some having prepared for two years or more. Some students spoke to me like their entire lives’ hopes had been lost,” he said, adding that for many students, their parents were equally inconsolable, some having been moved to tears.
Both Mannam and Lakshmi Reddy, one of the academy’s directors, urged the need to abolish the centralisation of the examination, and proclaimed the need to hold it at the state level. “Political corruption puts the students at risk, and they will be incentivised towards malpractices,” said Mannam. Reddy added that the monetary losses incurred by students from rural backgrounds are “indigestible”.
