NEW DELHI: The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Monday said that the provisional answer keys for the University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) will be published on its official website this week.
It also announced that the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research –National Eligibility Test (CSIR-NET) and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute – All India Entrance Examination for Admission) (ICAR AIEEA) and the All India Competitive Exam (PhD) results will be published this week.
Candidates need to watch for updates only on the official portal, it said. “Candidates will be able to view them, and raise a challenge within the notified period,” it said in a statement.
The computer-based UGC-NET is held twice a year and decides admissions to PhD programmes, assistant professor jobs and junior research fellowships in colleges and universities. The first UGC-NET exam for 2026 was held from June 22 to June 30 for 87 subjects.
The NEET-UG fiasco in May, its re-exam on June 21 and the pressure to declare those results at the earliest could have possibly made the NTA go all out to prioritise it. This has ensured the UGC-NET got temporarily sidelined, it is understood.
Students have been repeatedly requesting the agency to release the answer keys and the results. Release of the answer keys helps the candidates crosscheck their exam responses with them thereby giving them a fair idea about their expected results.
When compared with the timeline of the UGC NET exams last year, the first one was held from June 25 to June 29 and the provisional keys were declared on July 5. The second one was held from December 31 to January 7 with the answer keys released on January 14.
During the last two weeks, many students who took up the UGC-NET exam have gone online to convey their angst over the delay in the declaration of the results.
