Members of the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS) during a protest outside Shastri Bhawan, in New Delhi on Monday, August 17, 2026. PTI
New Delhi: Several student organisations held protests in the national capital on Monday, August 17, against the National Testing Agency’s decision to reconduct the UGC-NET examinations for three subjects, demanding that the NTA be scrapped as its “repeated lapses” have put students’ academic and career plans at risk.
The protests come amid continuing criticism of the NTA over examination-related irregularities.
The NTA has ordered fresh examinations for candidates who appeared for the English, Commerce and Sociology papers in June this year after an expert committee found factual, typographical, translation and language-related errors in the question papers.
The All India Students’ Association (AISA) held a demonstration at the NTA headquarters at Okhla Industrial Estate. It demanded the complete abolition of the testing agency, alleging that the cancellation of the three papers was yet another instance of systemic mismanagement and lack of accountability.
The Students’ Federation of India (SFI) held a protest at the NTA office in Okhla and called for nationwide demonstrations against the agency.
The RSS’s student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), also expressed concern over the re-examination, saying serious errors in a national-level examination raised questions over the credibility of the examination process.
ABVP national general secretary Virendra Singh Solanki said students should not have to “pay the price” for NTA’s lapses and demanded accountability at every stage of question-paper preparation and examination management.
“Serious errors in a national-level examination like UGC-NET are deeply concerning. Students should not have to pay the price for NTA’s lapses,” Solanki said.
The ABVP said it had earlier raised concerns over the delay in releasing the provisional answer key and called for strengthening question paper preparation through expert review, translation, proofreading and final quality checks.
Last month, a Cockroach Janta Party-led student agitation on the NEET paper leak issue had led to the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Union Education Minister and a major revamp of the NTA.
AISA, which is affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, alleged that when students and youth gathered at the NTA headquarters, police detained the protesters.
“We strongly condemn the brutal detention of protesting students,” AISA said, alleging that the police action was a continuation of the repression witnessed during earlier student movements over examination irregularities.
No immediate response was available from the police.
AISA said the latest controversy surrounding the June 2026 UGC-NET examination was another example of the crisis created by the NTA model. It alleged that reports had emerged regarding irregularities in the Sociology paper, including the circulation of a PDF purportedly containing questions and answers from within the NTA system.
The organisation also raised concerns over the English paper, alleging that a majority of its questions were reproduced from the 2024 examination.
The NTA had released the UGC-NET answer key on August 16, nearly two months after the examination, while issuing a special notice concerning the Sociology, Commerce and English papers.
Later the same day, it announced that the three examinations would be conducted afresh in September, citing factual, typographical, translation and grammatical errors.
The re-examinations are scheduled for September 9 and 10, and candidates will not be required to pay an additional examination fee.
AISA said the decision had compounded the crisis for students, with delayed NET results already affecting PhD admissions across universities and candidates now being forced to prepare for re-examinations with limited preparation time.
The CPI(M)-affiliated SFI’s Delhi state committee also alleged that the NTA’s latest decision had exposed its failure to conduct fair and error-free examinations.
It said the expert committee had found issues including misspelt scholars’ names, garbled book titles, grammatical errors, flawed question wording and repetition of previously administered questions.
“Students’ futures cannot continue to be treated as collateral damage,” the SFI said, demanding that the NTA be scrapped and replaced with a transparent and accountable examination system.
The organisation also demanded a judicial inquiry into the agency’s repeated examination failures and the circumstances surrounding the defective UGC-NET papers, saying every defective or re-conducted examination resulted in the loss of months of preparation, time and money for students and disrupted admissions and career plans.
The Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS) also held a protest demonstration at the Union Ministry of Education against the cancellation of the three UGC-NET papers and demanded the immediate disbanding of the NTA.
KYS alleged that protesting students and youth, including women activists, were manhandled and detained by police during the demonstration.
The student groups said the issue went beyond the UGC-NET re-examination and required structural changes in the country’s examination system, with AISA, SFI and KYS demanding an end to what they described as the privatisation of public examinations and calling for a transparent, publicly controlled system.
This post was last modified on August 17, 2026 9:12 pm