A day after the National Testing Agency (NTA) announced re-conduct of the UGC-NET papers for Sociology, Commerce, and English, Union Education Minister Pralhad Joshi on Monday (August 17, 2026) held a meeting with NTA officials in which he was apprised about steps taken to reform the education system.

The Minister told NTA to conduct a thorough audit of all examination processes and submit a report on corrective action taken.

Mr. Joshi was informed that “in the wake of recent issues”, the NTA has removed more than 50 staff and advertised for 10 new professional leadership positions – Chief Technology Officer, Chief Finance Officer, CISO, GM, Test Security, GM, R&D and Psychometrics, and others.

The Minister told NTA officials that strict compliance of established examination protocols must be ensured. He directed a complete overhaul of the confidential operations architecture. The revamp includes setting up of secluded rooms, air-gapped systems, and device-deposit protocols for persons handling confidential information on setting of question papers.

Air-gapped systems are computers or networks that are physically and wirelessly isolated from unsecured networks such as the internet. The systems have no Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or wired connections which make remote cyberattacks nearly impossible. These systems are used in nuclear power plants, electric grids, military networks, and financial systems.

Re-conduct of three UGC-NET papers is the second instance of the NTA failing to hold error-free examinations in the current year after the NEET-UG exam was cancelled due to a paper leak and held again. The NEET fiasco led to youth-led protests at Jantar Mantar that culminated in the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Education Minister.

‘Checks and balances’

“Domain specialists are being brought in from the private sector for cyber-security, psychometrics, question-paper design and other specialised areas,” an official said. “We are putting in place checks and balances around paper-setting protocols. Earlier, the administrative staff of NTA was completely delinked from experts who were setting papers. There were multiple people involved including item writers, moderators, convenors and translators. The CBI investigations have pointed out gaps where the experts were the once leaking the papers. So, we are working on closing such gaps,” the official added.

In its NEET-UG 2026 paper leak chargesheet, the CBI pointed out that experts who were paper-setters for Biology, Chemistry, and Physics had full access to questions which they leaked. They were not frisked when entering or exiting restricted confidential zones, and the NTA facility lacked a dedicated live CCTV monitoring control room.

“We are taking steps to put corrective steps in place to address these issues,” an NTA official said.

Published - August 17, 2026 09:22 pm IST