Millions of students at risk: India’s elite exams hit by corruption ‘scam’
India’s top examinations for admissions into medical schools and research programmes have come under unprecedented scrutiny amid mounting evidence of corruption and paper leaks, leaving the future of more than three million students hanging in the balance.
The National Testing Agency (NTA), an autonomous body under India’s Ministry of Education that is responsible for holding the nationwide examinations, is at the centre of these controversies over the integrity of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), a national exam for medical aspirants held last month.
The exam results on June 4 revealed irregularities in marks and a dramatically high number of toppers, with a wave of arrests in different parts of the country for alleged paper leaks and multimillion-dollar cheating scams.
Since then, several students have approached the Supreme Court and state high courts, staged protests in the scorching heat and organised campaigns on social media platforms demanding independent probes and a re-examination. About 2.4 million candidates took the NEET, competing for 100,000 spots in medical schools.
On 19 June, Narendra Modi’s newly formed coalition government also cancelled the National Eligibility Test (NET) that selects candidates for public-funded research fellowships, just a day after a million students wrote the paper. This followed reports that questions had been leaked “in the darknet” and were circulated on Telegram, said Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s education minister, on Thursday.
The minister, however, did not specify how the paper was compromised. “Question leak is an institutional failure from the NTA. We are assuring that there will be a reform committee and action will be taken,” he said. “We will not compromise on transparency. Students’ welfare is our priority.”
Meanwhile, leaders of India’s opposition and legal experts have criticised the Modi government over its failure to crack down on corruption in the country’s elite exams that determine who goes on to become doctors and scholars.
“The NTA literally has one job to do [to conduct exams] and it has failed miserably,” said Rishi Shukla, a law research scholar in Lucknow, who has aided multiple legal petitions against the NTA.
“Millions of students’ careers and lives are at risk. The discrepancies in these examinations carry a smell of large-level corruption in the system.”
Impossible numbers and a ‘wasted dream’
While the country was focused on the results of India’s national election on June 4, the NEET results stunned students and teachers alike: 67 students scored a perfect 720 out of 720, up from two students last year. Two years ago, the topper had scored 715 marks – the candidate with that score this year ranked the 225th.
At least two students scored 719 and 718 marks out of 720, a statistically impossible result under the NEET’s marking system (+4 for a correct answer and -1 for an incorrect one), doubling down on doubts over the allegations from several students of irregularities in the results.
In response, the NTA defended itself by saying that several students were awarded “grace marks” – handed out by examiners at their discretion – in cases where candidates lost time during the tests due to factors outside their control.
“The loss of examination time was ascertained and such candidates were compensated with grace marks. So, the candidates’ marks can be 718 or 719, also,” the NTA wrote on X. However, the agency did not disclose the parameters used for awarding grace marks.
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