The UGC-NET exam was canceled on Wednesday, according to the National Testing Agency, since there were initial signs that the exam’s integrity had been compromised
A day after more than 9 lakh candidates took the test in 317 cities, the Ministry of Education (MoE) announced late on Wednesday night that it was being canceled due to concerns raised by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs regarding “the integrity of the examination may have been compromised.”
With this decision, UGC-NET—which is essential for obtaining a teaching position at the entry level in Indian universities as well as for admission to PhD programs—becomes the first publicly administered test that is centrally administered to be discontinued following the introduction of a new anti-paper leak law by the Center.
The Ministry of Education further declared that details of the re-test will be disclosed separately, and that the CBI will take over the probe into the compromised exam inputs.
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair methods) Act, which was passed by Parliament in February 2024 and stipulates that anyone found guilty of “resorting to unfair means and offences” could face a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh and three to five years in prison, would most likely apply to this exam, according to sources
Senior officials of the National Testing Agency (NTA), which administers UGC-NET on behalf of the UGC and is already under fire for alleged irregularities in the administration of the NEET undergraduate exam—the single-window exam for admission to all MBBS programs in the nation—were taken aback by the ministry’s decision.
On Tuesday night, UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar really tweeted that the NTA had carried out UGC-NET June 2024 “successfully.” SC warns Center, NTA, “Even if 0.001% negligence… should be thoroughly dealt with.”
The Ministry of Home Affairs’ National Cybercrime Threat Analytics Unit of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center provided the negative inputs on UGC-NET, according to a ministry statement. The sources claimed that anomalies were found at a few test centers, despite the fact that the statement did not elaborate on the specific ways in which the exam’s integrity had been compromised.
Furthermore, the fact that the exam was canceled for all 9,08,580 candidates suggests that the first paper, which is taken by all examinees, may have been the subject of the purported compromise.
There are two papers available for UGC-NET: a general paper and a subject-specific paper that focuses on the candidate’s area of expertise. Offerings for the second paper include 83 subjects.
The aggregate length of the two papers is three hours. Multiple-choice (MCQ) questions of the objective type are present in both papers. There are two papers, totaling fifty in Paper 1 and one hundred in Paper 2, totaling 150 questions. The exam does not have negative marking.
Twice a year, in June and December, UGC-NET is held. Even though the NTA has been administering this test on behalf of the UGC using a computer-based format since December 2018, the agency switched back to using paper and pen this year.
Pen and paper exams in OMR format can be completed in a single day in a single or double shift, while computer-based exams are administered over several days in multiple shifts. According to NTA officials, the decision was made this year to help select more testing locations in rural regions by holding both the CUET-UG (although partially) and UGC-NET in pen and paper format in June 2024.
