NEW DELHI: The National Testing Agency (NTA) will re-conduct the UGC-NET 2026 examinations for English, Commerce and Sociology after a committee found multiple factual, typographical and translation errors in the question papers.
The three papers were among 87 subjects for which the UGC-NET examination was conducted between June 22 and June 30. The re-examination for English and Commerce will be held on September 9, while the Sociology paper will be conducted on September 10.
According to an official NTA release, the agency received multiple complaints from candidates who appeared for the three papers and subsequently constituted a committee to examine the concerns.
The committee found several errors, including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in the wording of questions, grammatical and gender-number agreement errors, punctuation mistakes and non-standard terms for established concepts. It also found that a significant number of questions had been repeated from previous examinations.
The committee recommended re-conducting the three papers in the interest of ensuring a fair and error-free examination.
The NTA said the extent of the defects meant they could not be addressed merely by dropping questions after the challenge process. It therefore decided to conduct the three papers afresh.
The re-examinations will be held as follows:
English: September 9, Shift 1 — 9 am to 12 noon
Commerce: September 9, Shift 2 — 3 pm to 6 pm
Sociology: September 10, Shift 1 — 9 am to 12 noon
Earlier on Sunday, the NTA released the provisional answer keys for the remaining 84 UGC-NET subjects. It also released the answer keys for the CSIR-NET and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) AIEEA and All India Competitive Examination (PhD).
Candidates can challenge the provisional answer keys until August 18 at 11.59 pm, with a fee of Rs 200 per challenge.
The development comes after candidates raised multiple complaints online in July about errors in some UGC-NET question papers. They had also been urging the NTA to release the answer keys and results.
The computer-based UGC-NET is conducted twice a year to determine eligibility for Junior Research Fellowships, Assistant Professor positions and PhD admissions in colleges and universities. The June 2026 examination was the first UGC-NET session of the year.
Each UGC-NET examination comprises two papers with a total of 150 questions carrying 300 marks. The first paper tests teaching and research aptitude, while the second assesses subject-specific knowledge.
