The Congress on Sunday (October 11, 2026) said a Parliamentary Standing Committee report had catalogued the “grave incompetence and malpractice” in the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the Ministry of Education, and hoped the Modi government “sheds its arrogance for the limited time it has remaining” and takes the report seriously.
The Congress said the Committee’s report, titled “Reforms and Strengthening of the National Testing Agency (NTA),” had highlighted that the Ministry of Education made the “blatantly false” claim to the panel that no paper leak had occurred in an exam conducted by the NTA since its formation in 2017.
In a statement, Jairam Ramesh, the Congress general secretary in-charge of communications, said the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, under the chairmanship of Rajya Sabha MP Mukul Wasnik, “catalogues the grave incompetence and malpractice in the NTA and the Ministry of Education.”
Sharing the statement on X, Mr. Ramesh said, “GyaneshGate is dominating the news now, but three months ago it was NTAgate that had launched the youth protest movement. Here is our statement on the NTA, based on the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education that has just been submitted to the Chairman, Rajya Sabha.”
Listing the main highlights of the report, Mr. Ramesh said the Ministry made the “blatantly false and audacious claim” to the Committee that no paper leak had occurred in an NTA exam from its formation in 2017 until 2025. “There have been 9 paper leaks and irregularities in NTA-conducted exams that we know of. What hope is there for a fair investigation or accountability when the Ministry even refuses to acknowledge what went wrong in the first place?” he said.
“The NTA is registered as a Society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. It is not a statutory body that has been created by an Act of Parliament. It therefore functions with limited accountability and parliamentary oversight,” Mr. Ramesh said.
The panel report, he said, highlighted that the NTA had been designed as a “khokhla (empty) body” that hands over all key responsibilities to private contractors, and that it had only 39 sanctioned positions, meaning it must rely on private contractors to conduct examinations. “Of the 39 sanctioned posts, only 23 officers are currently in position, a vacancy of 41%. This is despite the emphasis of the K. Radhakrishnan Committee on building the NTA’s staff strength,” he said, citing the report.
All 39 permanent posts in the NTA are filled through deputation, with officers serving only a two-to-three-year tenure, Mr. Ramesh said, adding that this prevents the development of institutional expertise.
“The NTA’s structure and design is not transparent and serves to enable the paper leak mafia. Despite repeated recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, there is no nationwide blacklist of firms with a track record of failure in providing examination-related services such as paper setting, logistics, printing and administration. Firms blacklisted in one State routinely get government contracts in others,” he said.
The NTA does not publish NEET-UG results in a publicly accessible manner, unlike the UPSC, Mr. Ramesh said, citing the report, adding that the anonymity of the results and the absence of test-centre-wise data prevents transparency and the detection of anomalous patterns in the performance of candidates and test centres.
Between the NEET paper leaks of 2024 and 2026, the post of Director General of the NTA was held by officers as an additional charge, he said. At a time when the NTA was tackling multiple paper leaks and was meant to implement reforms proposed by the K. Radhakrishnan Committee, the government failed to appoint a full-time officer to lead the agency, Mr. Ramesh said.
He said the NTA had become a financial profit-making body, having earned a total revenue surplus of ₹590 crore, which was invested in fixed deposits to earn interest rather than being used to assist students or build exam infrastructure.
“The former Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had dismissed this Standing Committee’s previous recommendations on reforming the NTA because the Committee ‘had members of the Opposition in it.’ We can only hope that the Modi government sheds its arrogance for the limited time it has remaining and takes this report seriously,” Mr. Ramesh said.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee, examining the role of the NTA in the wake of the NEET-UG paper leak and cancellation, had on Friday (October 9, 2026) called for a legislative mechanism to ensure the agency’s accountability to both Houses of Parliament.
Noting that trust in NTA-conducted examinations was a matter of social justice and national integrity, the Parliamentary Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, in its detailed report, said, “The education department may introduce appropriate Parliamentary framework that ensures NTA’s accountability to Parliament.”
The Committee, while recognising the NTA’s past efforts at improvement, said the cancellation of NEET (UG) 2026 implied further improvement was necessary. The NTA, on May 12, 2026, cancelled the NEET (UG) 2026 exam conducted on May 3, 2026, amid allegations of a paper leak.
Published – October 11, 2026 11:14 am IST
