New Delhi: The government has ordered a comprehensive overhaul of the National Testing Agency‘s (NTA) examination system and directed the agency to audit its entire testing process amid recent examination-related issues.
Education Minister Pralhad Joshi held a meeting with the Secretary, Department of Higher Education, NTA Director General and other senior officials to review the steps being taken by the agency, particularly those aimed at reforming the overall examination system.
A key part of the overhaul will be a complete revamp of NTA’s Confidential Operations (CONOPS) architecture, with the government directing the agency to implement measures including secluded rooms, air-gapped systems and device-deposit protocols on a “war footing”.
The minister also directed NTA to ensure strict compliance with established examination protocols and conduct a thorough audit of all examination processes. The agency has been asked to submit a report detailing the corrective action taken.
The reforms will also cover the academic and technical aspects of examination development. NTA is bringing in domain specialists from the private sector for cyber-security, psychometrics, question-paper design and other specialised areas.
The agency is also onboarding professionals for 10 new leadership positions, including Chief Technology Officer, Chief Finance Officer, Chief Information Security Officer, General Manager for Test Security and General Manager for Research and Development and Psychometrics.
The latest measures come amid a series of examination-related concerns involving NTA, including issues flagged in the UGC-NET June 2026 examination.
UGC-NET to re-conduct three papers
On August 16, NTA announced the re-conduct of the English, Commerce and Sociology papers of UGC-NET June 2026 after a committee found multiple defects in the three question papers.
The committee identified factual, typographical and translation errors, including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in question wording, grammatical and punctuation mistakes and non-standard coined terms for established concepts.
It also found that a significant number of questions had been repeated from previously administered papers.
NTA said defects of this extent could not be addressed merely by dropping questions after the challenge process and decided to conduct the three papers afresh.
The English and Commerce papers will be re-conducted on September 9, while Sociology will be held on September 10. The remaining 84 UGC-NET subjects will continue with result processing as scheduled.
The re-examination of the three subjects will not delay JRF seat allocation or issuance of e-certificates for Assistant Professor eligibility and PhD admission for the other subjects.
The government’s latest directions, however, go beyond any single examination. The proposed changes span confidential operations, cyber-security, question-paper design, psychometrics, technology and examination protocols, while the mandated audit is expected to assess the examination process as a whole.
