The Exam Mess

As Leaks And Lapses Disrupt Four National Exams And The Future Of Millions Of Students, The Spotlight Falls On The National Testing Agency And The Need For Reform And Transparency

- KAUSHIK DEKA

THE DAUGHTER OF A HUMBLE farmer, 19-year-old Sumedha (name changed) had spent years preparing for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance TestUndergraduate (NEET-UG), pursuing a dream that she shared with over 2 million others, of getting admission into a medical college and change her own and her family’s fortunes. Her father staked his all behind his daughter’s aspiration—mortgaging the only piece of land he owned—a patch of 1.5 bighas. That hope had seemed to come alive when Sumedha scored 620 out of the total score of 720. Trouble was, others seemed to have done much better, with just the number of toppers swelling from 2-3 in earlier years to 67. Then came allegations of a paper leak, in her home state to boot, and a CBI investigation.

But it wasn’t NEET that was cancelled. That misfortune fell on the University Grants Commission—National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET), which determines the eligibility for coll ege and university-level assistant professorships and awards Junior Research Fellowships (JRF) to candidates. The exam, taken by some 1 million aspirants, was cancelled 24 hours after it was held on June 18, after suspicion that the question paper was possibly leaked on the dark web and sold on the encrypted social media platform Telegram.

That contagion inspired the lockdown of another exam, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research National Eligibility Test (CSIR-NET) for lecturership and JRFs in science and technology. Some 175,355 candidates were supposed to take the test, scheduled between June 25 and 27. Now they anxiously await the next dates of the examination.