A day after the National Testing Agency (NTA) announced re-conduct of the UGC-NET papers for Sociology, Commerce, and English, Union Education Minister Pralhad Joshi on Monday (August 17, 2026) held a meeting with NTA officials in which he was apprised about steps taken to reform the education system.
He directed a complete overhaul of the confidential operations architecture. The revamp includes setting up of secluded rooms, air-gapped systems, and device-deposit protocols for persons handling confidential information on setting of question papers. The NEET fiasco led to youth-led protests at Jantar Mantar that culminated in the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Education Minister. “We are putting in place checks and balances around paper-setting protocols. There were multiple people involved including item writers, moderators, convenors and translators. The CBI investigations have pointed out gaps where the experts were the once leaking the papers. So, we are working on closing such gaps,” the official added.
Re-conduct of three UGC-NET papers is the second instance of the NTA failing to hold error-free examinations in the current year after the NEET-UG exam was cancelled due to a paper leak and held again.
The Minister told NTA to conduct a thorough audit of all examination processes and submit a report on corrective action taken. The Minister told NTA officials that strict compliance of established examination protocols must be ensured. “Domain specialists are being brought in from the private sector for cyber-security, psychometrics, question-paper design and other specialised areas,” an official said. “We are taking steps to put corrective steps in place to address these issues,” an NTA official said.
Earlier, the administrative staff of NTA was completely delinked from experts who were setting papers.
