The Congress on Thursday demanded the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the disbanding of the National Testing Agency (NTA) over alleged irregularities in the UGC-NET examination.
The opposition party's remarks came after reports that several candidates who appeared for the Sociology paper of the University Grants Commission-National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) on June 30 alleged that the examination paper had been leaked.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh, citing media reports, said the allegations raised serious questions over the integrity of the examination process.
He said days after the NEET-UG exam was leaked in May 2026, the 'Mantri Pradhan' announced that the NEET exam would now be conducted via a computer based test (CBT) from next year onwards.
"The implicit promise was that a CBT paper cannot be leaked unlike a pen and paper examination.
"Now there are reports that the UGC-NET Sociology examination this year appears to have been leaked despite being a CBT. Earlier we had seen that questions in the UGC-NET English Exam were wholesale lifted from past papers without any changes," Ramesh said on X.
"The bottom line is that whatever be the format of the exam, paper leaks and irregularities are occurring because the Modi government's Education Ministry is compromised and the National Testing Agency (NTA) is deliberately incompetent and incapacitated.
"The Mantri Pradhan must resign and the NTA must be disbanded," he said.
A day earlier, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also slammed the government over the alleged irregularities, saying repeated "scams" showed that it had failed to protect the interests of students.
"The serious allegations that have surfaced regarding last week's UGC-NET exam are utterly shocking. Just a few weeks after the NEET paper leak, reports are now emerging that a 100-page PDF was circulated right before the UGC-NET exam.
"This PDF pertains to the question paper setting, which is available only with the NTA. Nearly 90 questions in the PDF match those from the actual Sociology question paper," Gandhi had said in a post on X.
"Even after the repeated scams in NEET and NET, the Modi government continues to turn a blind eye and sleep soundly, because the years of hard work put in by lakhs of students -- who burn the midnight oil -- holds no value for them," the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha had said.
There was no immediate response from the NTA to the allegations.
(With inputs from PTI)
