Student groups protest UGC-NET re-exam, demand NTA accountability
Several student organisations on Monday held protests here and announced nationwide demonstrations against the National Testing Agency's decision to re-conduct the UGC-NET examinations for three subjects, alleging that repeated lapses have put students' academic and career plans at risk.
The NTA has ordered the fresh examination for candidates who appeared for English, Commerce and Sociology tests in June this year, after an expert committee found extensive factual, typographical, translation and language-related errors in the question papers.
The re-examinations are scheduled for September 9 and 10, and candidates will not be required to pay an additional examination fee.
The re-exam decision has triggered criticism from several student organisations, including the Students' Federation of India (SFI), All India Students' Association (AISA) and Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS), which have called for protests in the national capital demanding that the NTA be scrapped or held accountable for examination lapses.
AISA, which is affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, held a demonstration at the NTA headquarters at Okhla Industrial Estate at around 3 pm on Monday and demanded the scrapping of the NTA, alleging that the cancellation of the three papers was yet another failure of the testing agency.
The SFI's Delhi state committee also held a protest at the NTA office in Okhla, while its central executive committee urged students, states and units across the country to participate in protests against the examination agency.
In a statement, the CPI(M)-affiliated SFI said the NTA's latest decision had once again exposed its failure to conduct a fair and error-free examination.
It said the expert committee had found issues including misspelt scholars' names, garbled book titles, grammatical errors, flawed question wording and repetition of previously administered questions.
"Students' futures cannot continue to be treated as collateral damage," the organisation said, demanding that the NTA be scrapped and replaced with a transparent and accountable examination system.
The protests come less than a month after the Cockroach-Janta Party-led student agitation over the alleged NEET paper leak had led to the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Union education minister.
The SFI also demanded a judicial inquiry into the agency's repeated examination failures and the circumstances surrounding the defective UGC-NET papers.
It said every defective or re-conducted examination resulted in the loss of months of preparation, time and money for students and disrupted admissions and career plans.
The KYS demanded the immediate disbanding of the NTA. It called for a Supreme Court-monitored inquiry into alleged NTA "scams" and opposed what it described as the privatisation of examination infrastructure.
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the RSS' student wing, also expressed concern over the re-examination and said serious errors in a national-level examination raised questions over the credibility of the examination process.
ABVP National General Secretary Virendra Singh Solanki said students should not have to "pay the price" for NTA's lapses and demanded accountability at every stage of question-paper preparation and examination management.
"Serious errors in a national-level examination like UGC-NET are deeply concerning. Students should not have to pay the price for NTA's lapses," Solanki said.
He also urged the NTA to ensure proper examination centre allocation and adequate travel arrangements for students appearing for the re-examination so that they do not face additional financial or mental stress.
The ABVP said it had earlier raised concerns over the delay in releasing the provisional answer key.
It said the NTA should strengthen question paper preparation -- expert review, translation, proofreading and final quality checks.
The student organisations have said the issue goes beyond re-examination and requires structural changes in the country's examination system.
