On May 3, 2026, the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), India’s unified, nationwide entrance examination for undergraduate medical programmes, was conducted. In the following days, social media was flooded with reels by students celebrating the end of months, years, of relentless preparation.

Barely two weeks later, that sense of relief had curdled into despair. On May 12, the National Testing Agency (NTA), India’s nodal body for conducting higher education entrance examinations, announced the cancellation of NEET 2026 following widespread allegations of the circulation of a “guess paper” and multiple accusations of irregularities in the original examination. Since then, at least four students have died by suicide, driven by despair.

In Rajasthan’s Sikar, 22-year-old Pradeep Meghwal died by suicide in his residence. Having spent the last three years preparing for NEET, he was reportedly confident of securing admission to a premier medical institution this year. In Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri, 21-year-old Ritik Mishra ended his life, devastated by the abrupt nullification of the years of effort he had put into what was his third attempt at getting through the entrance test. In Delhi’s Azadpur, 20-year-old Anshika Pandey, who had also appeared for the third time this year after missing out on a seat by merely four marks in 2025, succumbed to the mounting distress caused by the examination’s cancellation. In Goa, a 17-year-old boy died by suicide, leaving behind a note about the crushing pressure of having to prepare for competitive examinations while keeping his passion for hockey alive.

These deaths underscore the deep fractures within a system that has, over the years, repeatedly revealed institutional failure through paper leaks and examination irregularities. The cancellation of the examination has directly impacted nearly 22.8 lakh students, who find their efforts invalidated and their futures suddenly in disarray. Of these, 13.32 lakh—nearly 58 per cent—are women. All these students were competing for only 59,416 seats.

This is not the first time that the NTA has found itself at the centre of a nationwide controversy. In 2024, shortly after NEET was conducted, reports surfaced alleging that the question paper had been leaked in Bihar and Jharkhand, triggering multiple arrests. The results too had provoked widespread suspicion after an unprecedented 67 students secured a perfect score of 720 out of 720: many of them were reportedly from the same examination centre.

The NTA said it had allotted “grace marks” to 1,563 candidates as compensation for an alleged “loss of time” at certain centres. The consequence was mathematically improbable scores such as 718 and 719. Following legal challenges and mounting public outrage, the government eventually revoked the grace marks. A limited retest was subsequently conducted on June 23, 2024, exclusively for the 1,563 affected candidates.

In July 2024, a Supreme Court bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, heard a cluster of petitions demanding a complete nationwide re-examination. The court ultimately ruled that, although a paper leak had indeed occurred, there was no evidence pointing to a “systemic breach” or a structural collapse of the examination process. The bench refused to annul the examination in its entirety, observing that such a decision would unjustly penalise millions of candidates while severely disrupting the country’s medical education calendar. At the same time, the court directed the NTA to revise the final merit list by removing marks awarded for a disputed physics question. This correction reduced the number of perfect scorers from 67 to 17.

Failure of the NTA

In the aftermath of the 2024 controversy, the Central government initiated an investigation by the CBI and additionally constituted a high-level reform committee to overhaul and strengthen the NTA’s examination protocols. Following intense public backlash, the former NTA chief Subodh Kumar Singh was removed from the position on June 22, 2024. However, in October 2024, he was appointed as Additional Secretary and Financial Adviser in the Union Ministry of Steel before later being repatriated to his home cadre in Chhattisgarh.

He currently serves as Principal Secretary to Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, with additional charge as Principal Secretary of the State’s Energy Department. To many observers, this career trajectory is yet another instance of bureaucratic rehabilitation, topped by professional ascendancy within the administrative hierarchy.

The reexamination has been scheduled for June 21, with the authorities clarifying that students will not be required to re-register for the test. Meanwhile, the CBI continues to probe what officials have described as an expansive “exam mafia” network allegedly operating across multiple States, including Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Haryana. Multiple individuals, including a teacher and several coaching centre owners, have already been arrested in connection to the investigation.

In an attempt to overhaul the agency and introduce systemic reforms, the government has inducted four senior administrative officers into the NTA, including two Joint Secretaries who will now serve as Additional Director Generals within the organisation.

The NTA was primarily conceived as an autonomous public body with the mandate of seamlessly conducting higher education entrance examinations. Over the years, it has functioned less like a public service institution and more like an entity geared towards maximising revenue while minimising institutional accountability.

According to a Rajya Sabha committee report from 2023, the agency generated thousands of crores through examination fees but spent comparatively less on administering the examinations, thereby accumulating a substantial financial surplus. In a written reply submitted to the Rajya Sabha on July 31, 2024, Union Minister of State for Education Sukanta Majumdar presented year-wise data on the NTA’s income and expenditure since its establishment in 2018, confirming that the agency had recorded a profit of Rs.448 crore over six years.

Neha, national president of the All India Students’ Association, said: “The entire education structure has been systematically dismantled and replaced by a parallel system that does not look at education as a right but as an opportunity to make money.” She added, “This transformation has directly fuelled student suicides, particularly in coaching hubs such as Kota and other cities where lakhs of students migrate for competitive examination preparation. The centralisation of examinations, coupled with the gradual erosion of an accessible public education system, has subjected students and families to extraordinary psychological and financial strain. Families spend a substantial part of their annual savings on private coaching institutions in the hope that their children will have a stable future in a landscape marked by unemployment, inflation, and deepening economic insecurity.”

Neha pointed out that coaching centres have been repeatedly implicated in corruption scandals and paper leak controversies. “The NTA functions in tandem with these institutions in all probability. In any case, the paper leaks prove the failure of the agency,” she said.

Available data indicate that there have been 70-89 paper leak incidents across State and Central-level examinations over the past decade. Since its establishment in 2018, the NTA has been involved in at least four major examination-related controversies: NEET 2026; UGC-NET 2024, where the examination was cancelled within 24 hours of its completion following allegations of a leak; NEET 2024, which was marred by what authorities described as “localised leaks”; and JEE 2021, where an organised syndicate used remote-access software to hijack candidates’ computers.

Suresh Babu, who teaches at the Centre for Educational Studies at JNU, underscored the urgent need for a robust accountability mechanism. “The government cannot abdicate responsibility to the public at large. It must be answerable for what is happening, especially in matters of corruption. The erosion of public trust in the examination system could have profound implications for the future of education and democracy in India. The growing ‘trust deficit’ between young people and the state is already shaping how students perceive institutions, governance, merit. Repeated controversies over examinations is deepening the scepticism towards our political and educational systems. We should be cautious, keeping in mind the youth-led mobilisations in neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal, fuelled by similar grievances,” he said.

Fundamental flaw

On May 15, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced that NEET-UG would transition to a fully computer-based format from 2027. Critics argue that such a move might further disadvantage students from rural and economically backward families who do not have proper digital access. According to a report published by the Unified District Information System for Education under the Ministry of Education for the 2024–25 period, only 60 per cent of government schools in India have access to computers, while 58 per cent possess Internet connectivity. Far from democratising access, the proposed shift is more likely to exacerbate urban-rural, and affluent-deprived divides.

Faizan Mustafa, the former Vice Chancellor of NALSAR University of Law, called for the immediate decentralisation of college entrance examinations, arguing that centralised tests overwhelmingly serve socially and economically privileged sections. “When we were having different examinations in different States, we produced some of the best doctors in the world. A country of our size may ideally have at least three, four, or five exams so that if a student does badly in one, they have the chance of appearing in another and saving their year,” he said. Mustafa also expressed anguish over the psychological toll of examination cancellations on students.

According to him, an examination such as NEET has a fundamental flaw: while assessing a student’s aptitude in physics, chemistry, and biology, it does nothing to find out if they possesses the aptitude, empathy, or practical skills needed to become a good doctor. “Entrance examinations across professions should be reoriented towards assessing the actual capabilities required for fields such as medicine, law, or engineering, rather than filtering candidates through an intensely competitive, memorisation-based system,” he said.

Mustafa articulated the core issue bluntly: “All common entrance tests are elitist. If I can afford coaching, I will make it. People from rural areas and those studying in regional languages are automatically at a disadvantage.” Similar conclusions were drawn by the Rajan Committee report (2021) on the impact of NEET on medical admissions in Tamil Nadu.

The call is getting louder for a comprehensive overhaul of the NTA alongside urgent efforts to decentralise entrance examinations and reassess India’s education system itself. Obviously, the crisis extends far beyond isolated incidents of paper leaks or administrative lapses. It suggests a collapse of accessibility, equity, and public trust in the education system. The incremental and reactionary measures proposed by the government fail to confront these structural issues. Therefore, they are unlikely to meaningfully resolve the crisis.

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