NEW DELHI, AUG 17 (PTI): The Congress on Monday attacked the government after the National Testing Agency announced a retest for three papers of the UGC-NET June 2026 examination, with Rahul Gandhi demanding that the NTA leadership be held accountable for it and asserting that his party will not stop until Prime Minister Narendra Modi answers for students’ years being “stolen”.
Gandhi alleged that the education system was “an extraction machine”.
“Modi ji, look at what your NTA has just done. UGC-NET exams for Sociology, English and Commerce were held between 22 and 30 June. Nearly two months later, NTA has cancelled all three because it set faulty papers and repeated old questions,” he said.
Gandhi said thousands of candidates who prepared for years, filled forms, paid the fees, travelled to distant centres, must now do it all again in September.
“NTA makes the mistake but the student serves the sentence,” he said.
“I said this in Kota, in Dehradun, in Prayagraj, and I will keep saying it — this is no longer an education system. It is an extraction machine. It takes your money, your years, your mental health, and your confidence and returns nothing. Not even a job,” the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.
“NTA still won’t answer the real question — were these papers leaked before the exam?
“Just like every other arm of the Modi government, NTA never says it’s their fault. Just like every other compromised paper, I am absolutely sure there will be no accountability,” Gandhi also said.
He said Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation was the first step, not the last. “NTA’s leadership must be held accountable too,” he demanded.
“To every student sitting this exam again in September – you are not the problem. PM Modi built a system that cannot run an exam and then blames the students who take it. Your years are being stolen and we will not stop until PM Modi answers for it,” Gandhi said in his post.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said that nearly two months after the UGC NET June 2026 exam, the NTA itself admitted that the question papers for English, commerce, and sociology contained factual, typographical, and translation errors.
“Names of prominent scholars were misspelled, book titles were garbled, there were errors in the language of the questions, mistakes in grammatical and gender-number agreement, punctuation errors, and non-standard terms were used for established concepts,” Ramesh said in his post in Hindi on X.
Not only that, the NTA’s committee found that a large number of such questions were repeated – ones that had already been asked in previous exams, he said.
Now, the exams for these three subjects will be held again on September 9 and 10, the Congress leader pointed out.
“Our question is: Why should the country’s students bear the punishment for NTA’s mistakes? Does it really take nearly two months to detect such serious errors?” Ramesh said.
How will the losses be compensated — and by whom — for those students who, due to this delay, will be deprived of admission to this year’s academic session in various universities, he asked.
“The question isn’t just why the exam is being held again. The question is how a question paper with such serious errors was prepared and approved in the first place,” Ramesh said.
Whose responsibility is this negligence in a national-level exam tied to the careers of millions of young people, the Congress general secretary asked.
“Why should candidates pay the price for mistakes in the examination system? These questions aren’t just for the thousands of students in these three subjects. The government must explain why the results for thousands of candidates who have already taken the exams in 84 other subjects are delayed,” he said.
Ramesh asserted that for the young people who took the exam in June, every day matters.
Opportunities like JRF, Assistant Professor eligibility, and PhD admissions are linked to the results, he pointed out.
“Will the Prime Minister, who chides the country’s youth from the ramparts of the Red Fort, say anything about his own responsibility? The youth of the country demands answers,” Ramesh said.
The National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) staged a protest outside the National Testing Agency (NTA) office here over alleged irregularities in the UGC-NET June 2026 examination and demanded that the testing agency be scrapped.
Later, addressing a press conference, Indian Youth Congress chief Uday Bhanu Chib said the country needs to eliminate the “paper leak Naxal”.
“Perhaps the BJP government wants to bring these mistakes to light in instalments, so that Gen-Z’s anger doesn’t erupt against Modi ji and Amit Shah,” Chib said.
Chib said he party demands that students should be provided the facility to fill forms for all exams for just 1 rupee.
Addressing the presser along with Chib, Chayanika Uniyal, who teaches at the Delhi University, asked whether will action be taken against the officials and experts who made such a serious mistake.
“For the officials and experts against whom action will be taken, will their names be made public? Will the students be compensated by the government? For the students whose admission deadlines have passed, will the government provide them any compensation?” she said.
The NTA on Sunday announced the retest for three papers of the UGC-NET June 2026 examination — English, commerce and sociology — following complaints about several errors in these papers.
Protocols under review for error-free exams in future: NTA
NEW DELHI, AUG 17 (PTI): As opposition leaders targeted the National Testing Agency (NTA) over lapses in three papers of the UGC-NET examination, agency sources said internal processes and protocols are being reviewed to ensure that all exams are fair and error-free in the future.
The agency proactively looked into the complainants and decided to conduct re-tests, with all corrective measures being taken in the overall interest of candidates and to strengthen the foundation of a more accountable examination system, the sources said. The NTA on Sunday night announced re-tests for three papers of the UGC-NET June 2026 examination — English, Commerce and Sociology — following complaints about several errors in the papers. The English and Commerce papers will be held on September 9, while the exam for the Sociology paper will be conducted the next day.
The NTA conducted the UGC-NET June 2026 examination from June 22 to 30 across 87 subjects for the award of Junior Research Fellowship, eligibility for Assistant Professor, and admission to PhD programmes.
“The task of an examination-conducting agency is not only to conduct error-free examinations, but also to act promptly and honestly whenever an anomaly is found,” a source said.
The NTA has taken the responsibility of acknowledging that something had gone wrong in these papers and for taking corrective action, at cost to itself, rather than papering over the problem, the source added.
The agency conducted examinations across 184 subjects and 24,700 questions, with the overwhelming majority found to be sound. It proactively identified issues in three subjects and is correcting them transparently in the interest of honest candidates and a fair, accurate and error-free examination system, the source said.
The NTA is using the experience to strengthen its internal processes and protocols at the stages of setting, moderating, translating and composing question papers, so that errors of this kind are prevented at source and responsibility for the lapses is fixed, the source said.
“The willingness to identify problems proactively, to admit them, and to act, even where action is difficult, is itself the foundation of a more accountable examination system.
“An agency that conducts examinations at this scale will occasionally encounter problems; what defines its credibility is that it finds them, owns them, and corrects them in the interest of candidates,” the source said.
Several opposition leaders hit out at the government over this issue, which comes months after the cancellation and re-test of the NEET-UG examination by the NTA following a paper leak.
Even the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS, expressed serious concern over the issue, with its National General Secretary Virendra Singh Solanki saying students’ future cannot be compromised and the NTA must be held accountable.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi targeted the Modi government and demanded that the NTA’s leadership be held accountable. In a post on X, he alleged that “this is no longer an education system. It is an extraction machine”.
He said the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan was the first step, not the last. “NTA’s leadership must be held accountable too,” he demanded.
Pradhan had to resign as Union education minister following large-scale protests over the NEET-UG paper leak issue.
Several other Congress leaders also slammed the government, saying students were paying the price for the NTA’s inefficiency and that the party will not stop until Prime Minister Narendra Modi answered for students’ years being “stolen”.
Earlier in the day, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) staged a protest outside the NTA office here over alleged irregularities in the UGC-NET June 2026 examination and demanded that the testing agency be scrapped.
In a post on X, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said the issue was not a “minor error” but a failure that was costing students their time, money, mental peace and opportunities.
The NTA said it received several complaints about multiple errors in three papers, following which it formed a committee to look into the lapses.
“The committee identified the anomalies in the three subjects and recommended that, in the interest of holding a fair and error-free examination, these three papers should be re-conducted. It was recommended that papers carrying such defects did not meet the standards of fairness and error-free examination,” the NTA said.