NTA has only 15 permanent staff members, spends crores on outsourcing work

The number of applicants the National Testing Agency caters to has grown to around 1.50 crore annually.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

A 15-member body that starts with the chairperson and ends with a senior superintendent level officer is the only permanent staff that comprises the National Testing Agency (NTA), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education that was registered in May 2018 to conduct all entrance examinations for higher education in which 40 lakh students were appearing at the time of its inception.

Six years later, the NTA is now conducting at least 15 different examinations for admissions into colleges and universities and ten examinations for jobs in government bodies. The number of applicants that this 15-member body caters to has now grown to around 1.50 crore annually, almost four times what it was catering to in 2018 when it was started.

For conducting these examinations that allow applicants to make a lucrative career in the fields of medicine and engineering if they are able to get into premier government colleges, the NTA is largely dependent on private outsourced employees and a small group of government employees who are selected for a limited time period on deputation from other government organizations.