News

NEW DELHI : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday criticised the National Testing Agency (NTA) over its decision to conduct fresh UGC-NET exams for English, Commerce and Sociology. The three papers, originally held between June 22 and 30, were cancelled after an NTA-appointed committee found several errors in the question papers. These included factual, spelling, translation and grammar mistakes, along with questions repeated from earlier examinations. Rahul Gandhi directly addressed Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a post on X. https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/2089203904395477304?s20 “Modi ji, look at what your NTA has just done,” Gandhi said. He said thousands of students who had spent months or years preparing for the examination would now have to go through the process again. “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. Gandhi Questions Possible Paper Leak Gandhi also questioned whether the examination papers could have been leaked before the test. “NTA still won’t answer the real question were these papers leaked before the exam?” he said. He said the controversy showed deeper problems in India's examination system and accused the government of putting financial and emotional pressure on students. “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,” Gandhi said. He also demanded greater accountability from NTA officials and referred to former Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. “Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation was the first step, not the last. NTA’s leadership must be held accountable too,” Gandhi said. Addressing students who will appear for the retest, “To every student sitting this exam again in September you are not the problem.” Gandhi added Why Are Three UGC-NET Papers Being Repeated? The NTA said a committee reviewed complaints about the English, Commerce and Sociology question papers. The committee reportedly found several problems, including misspelled names of scholars, incorrect book titles, errors in questions, translation issues, punctuation mistakes and non-standard terminology. It also found a significant number of questions that had appeared in previous examinations. The NTA said the problems were serious enough that simply removing the affected questions was not considered an appropriate solution. Fresh examinations were therefore recommended. The English and Commerce papers will be held on September 9, while the Sociology paper will be conducted on September 10. Candidates will not have to pay an additional examination fee. Jairam Ramesh Also Questions NTA Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh also questioned why students should face the consequences of mistakes made by the examination agency. Ramesh questioned why it took nearly two months for the NTA to identify the errors and asked how students would be compensated for the disruption, particularly those whose university admissions or academic plans could be affected. “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. The UGC-NET June 2026 examination was conducted across 87 subjects for eligibility for Junior Research Fellowship, assistant professorship and PhD admissions. The NTA said results for the remaining 84 subjects would be declared as scheduled.