NEET cancelled. NTA’s institutional failure is traumatic for students. It’s also costing the economy

Two years ago, on June 13, 2024, over a month after NEET was held on May 5, Dharmendra Pradhan emphasised there had been no ‘leak’ of the all-India medical entrance exam paper.

By June 25, CBI was on the case, as the enormity, and messy fallout, of the multi-state exam-leak ops surfaced – the first FIR filed by Bihar cops on May 5 itself.

Should one see this year’s cancellation – impacting 23L applicants – as an improvement? That the leak was confirmed quickly, and cancellation announced within days? That GOI and National Testing Agency spared us denials?

There seem to be fundamental flaws in NTA – its architecture, priorities, management, administration and cybertech-security. What else can explain the repeated failures on the same issues, year after year?

Teething problems don’t stretch a decade – NTA, as a central, nodal body to conduct all college and professional entrance exams was established in 2017. Its functioning has been marred by question paper leaks, cheating, fraud, and an ever-faltering algorithm-led mapping of applicants to test centres, forcing applicants on long pricey commutes.

Taken together, NTA has made getting into college/higher education an expensive obstacle race – with a high mental health cost, for school-leaving teens, and their families.

It is little wonder that families, those who can conceive of it, are increasingly exploring overseas options for higher education. A Niti Aayog Nov 2025 working paper cites RBI numbers to show that Indians’ spending on overseas education has been meteoric over the last decade.

In 2013-14, Indians sent about Rs 975cr abroad for higher studies. By 2023-24, this had jumped to around Rs 29k cr – over 20 times more, and equal to almost half of GOI’s higher education budget. It’s reasonable to say, and anecdotally evident too, that the unreliability inbuilt in NTA-conducted exams, is a push factor. But only 3 of every 100 Indian students study abroad.

The 97% that hope to get into college somewhere in India, have suffered around 20 exams put off, including for Covid-related logistics, over the last 10 years – cancellations, postponements, and re-tests. GOI must review NTA’s basic blueprint, not only to spare school-leaving teens and young adults this annual trauma, but also because such institutional failures hurt the economy.

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