NTA reforms after the NEET leak: the Public Examinations Act, 16 new posts, and NEET-UG 2026 cancelled

On 3 May 2026 the National Testing Agency conducted the NEET-UG 2026 examination.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has since registered a case in connection with an alleged paper leak in its conduct. The first information report covers alleged irregularities and an alleged paper leak, for offences including criminal conspiracy, cheating, criminal breach of trust, theft and destruction of evidence, and offences under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act 2024.

A first information report is the first document an agency writes when it opens an investigation. It is a starting point, not a finding. Nothing in it has been established before a court and no person has been held at fault by any court.

Note the last item on that list of offences. The Act being invoked carries the year 2024. The examination it is being invoked over was held in 2026.

That gap is what this piece is about. Between those two years a law was passed, a committee reported, posts were created and an agency was told what it would no longer do. This is the record of what was built, and what happened at the next examination anyway.

The 101, and a deadline that had already slipped

The committee was constituted under the chairmanship of the former ISRO chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan, after the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak. It made 101 recommendations to overhaul the agency and strengthen the security and integrity of public examinations, and submitted its report to the Ministry of Education in October 2024.

The Supreme Court had directed that the report be submitted to the Ministry by 30 September 2024. It arrived in October. The Court then directed the Ministry to take a decision on the recommendations.

So the sequence is a court setting a date, the date passing, the report arriving after it, and the Ministry being told to decide. Each step is on the record and none of it is dramatic. It is simply slower than the document that ordered it.

The law that was already there

The law now being invoked over a 2026 examination was written before the leak that made everyone look for one.

The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Bill 2024, Bill No. 15 of 2024, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 5 February 2024. Its Statement of Objects and Reasons records that before it there was no specific substantive law to deal with unfair means or offences of this kind. It states that malpractices in public examinations lead to delays and cancellations, and cites the government's own measures already taken, including doing away with interviews for certain recruitment and the introduction of computer-based tests.

It became the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act 2024, designated Act 1 of 2024, published in the Gazette of India. Its stated purpose is to prevent unfair means in public examinations and to provide for matters connected with that. The National Testing Agency is named in the Schedule to the Act as a body whose examinations it covers.

The Act defines unfair means in relation to the conduct of a public examination to include leakage of a question paper.

What it can do

The penalties are not small, and they are aimed in a particular direction.

A person resorting to unfair means or offences under the Act is punishable with imprisonment of not less than three years, extendable to five, with a fine. Organised crime relating to public examinations carries imprisonment of not less than five years, extendable to ten, and a fine of not less than one crore rupees.

The heavier provisions reach institutions rather than individuals. A service provider found liable can be fined up to one crore rupees, must have the proportionate cost of the examination recovered from it, and can be barred from being assigned responsibility for a public examination. Where an institution is involved in an organised crime under the Act, its property is liable to attachment. And where an offence is established to have been committed with the consent or connivance of a director, senior management or person in charge of a service provider firm, that person is personally liable.

The people running the examination are covered too. The chairperson, members, officers and employees of a public examination authority fall within the Act's reach.

Two features matter for how the Act operates. All offences under it are cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable, which means an arrest can be made without a warrant, bail is not a matter of right, and the case cannot be settled between the parties and withdrawn. And an offence must be investigated by an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police or Assistant Commissioner of Police, with the Central Government empowered to refer an investigation to a central agency.

And the one thing it does not do

A candidate, as the Act defines one, is not liable for action under it.

Read that against everything above. The Act reaches the gang, the service provider, the firm's directors and the examination authority's own officers. It deliberately does not reach the student. Whatever else is arguable about this law, it was not written to prosecute the person sitting the paper.

One caution about the version this rests on. As of the document dated 13 February 2024 that this archive holds, the Act had not commenced. Commencement is a separate step from passage, and the record here does not carry the date it took effect.

Sixteen posts, taken on record

Alongside the law, the agency itself was rebuilt, and the clearest evidence of that is bureaucratic rather than rhetorical.

Sixteen new posts were created to strengthen the agency, eight at the level of Director and eight at the level of Joint Director. A Department of Personnel and Training office memorandum dated 8 November 2024 took those sixteen posts on record.

That is what institutional change looks like on paper. Not an announcement, an office memorandum.

A High-Powered Steering Committee was constituted by the Ministry on 14 November 2024, chaired by Dr Radhakrishnan, which the expert committee had itself recommended in order to monitor implementation. The Ministry wrote to all states and union territories on 20 November 2024 seeking state machinery support, shared the recommendations with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, requested the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to issue instructions to state and district informatics officers, and took up establishing examination centres with centrally funded institutions.

The expert committee's substance ran the same way. It recommended reforming the National Common Entrance Test, called for a detailed framework on testing centre allocation policy, and laid out standard operating procedures to prevent breaches.

The Union of India filed a compliance report dated 17 December 2024, twenty-seven days after the letter to the states. The Supreme Court disposed of the miscellaneous application in view of the constitution of the steering committee.

From that compliance report to now, one year and eight months have elapsed, with no end recorded in these documents.

A narrower agency

The restructuring changed what the agency is for, not only how it is staffed.

The agency began the process by creating new posts and appointing new officers, following the recommendations of the committee led by the former ISRO chairman. From 2025 it will conduct only entrance examinations for higher education institutions and will no longer conduct recruitment examinations. From 2025 those entrance examinations move from the usual July timeline to January or February. Dr Radhakrishnan was requested to lead a three-member high-powered steering committee to oversee the change.

And one line describes a genuine shift in authority. The Health Ministry will determine how examinations like NEET are conducted, while the agency, as a service provider, focuses on execution.

Service provider is the phrase to sit with. It means the body that runs the examination is no longer the body that decides how the examination should be run.

What the agency says it has done

The agency's own account is more concrete than most such statements, which makes it checkable.

Four senior officers have been posted to it over recent days, two at Joint Secretary level and two at Director level, with the Joint Secretary-level officers designated Additional Director General. It has advertised three specialist leadership positions, a Chief Technology Officer, a Chief Financial Officer and a General Manager for Human Resources, with applications invited within fifteen days and selection to be made by a duly constituted selection committee. The technology role's mandate includes modernising the agency's full technology stack.

Against that, the load. The agency's high-stake examinations collectively serve over one crore candidates each year. Its own strategic material states it will develop, administer and score more than 150 lakh candidates across its examinations, with about 15 lakh students appearing in some tests and 1.5 lakh appearing simultaneously in others.

Four officers and three advertised posts, against one crore candidates a year. Both figures are on the record and neither is a judgement. They are simply the two ends of the same sentence.

The Court, still asking

The rebuild did not end the Court's involvement in it.

The Supreme Court sought the Centre's response on implementing the committee's recommendations, specifically asking for details on the implementation of recommendations relating to a particular set of measures. It reiterated the need to institutionalise the agency, with secure infrastructure, dedicated testing centres, cyber-security systems, institutional expertise and a permanent mechanism for examination-related operations, to prevent future paper leaks. The Court said its objective was to ensure the country has a robust examination institution.

Permanent is the word to hold. Not assembled fresh each season.

The Solicitor General, appearing for the Centre and the agency, explained the safeguards currently in place, including that the identity of the final question paper remains unknown until it is selected.

And then the next exam

On 3 May 2026 the examination was held. It was then cancelled, and the cancellation was announced by the same agency that had conducted it. The Director General addressed a press conference on the cancellation in New Delhi, stating that if there is even the slightest doubt regarding the integrity of the examination process, the appropriate decision is to cancel it.

He said the agency will refund the examination fees to students, and that it will conduct a re-examination in a fair manner with no additional fee charged.

The criminal side moved in parallel. The CBI registered its case on a written complaint received from the Department of Higher Education, has taken up the matter for a comprehensive investigation to ascertain the nature and extent of what occurred, and has formed and dispatched special teams to various locations.

All of it remains allegation. None of it has been established before a court.

Did it hold

Set the two columns side by side, because the honest answer is in the gap between them.

On one side, what was built. A law on the books since early 2024, naming the agency in its Schedule, reaching service providers, firm directors and examination officers, with ten-year sentences and one-crore fines available. Sixteen new posts taken on record by an office memorandum. A steering committee to monitor implementation. States written to, ministries co-ordinated, a compliance report filed. A narrowed mandate, with the agency recast as a service provider and the timetable moved. Four senior officers posted and three specialist roles advertised.

On the other, what happened next. An examination conducted on 3 May 2026, cancelled by the agency that conducted it, fees refunded, a re-examination promised, and a CBI case registered over an alleged leak, invoking the very Act that was written to prevent one.

Neither column cancels the other, and the second is not proof the first was worthless. A law is invoked precisely when something has allegedly gone wrong, and an agency cancelling its own examination on the slightest doubt is the opposite of the flip-flops a court criticised in 2024.

But the question the 2024 judgment left open is the one still open now. The Court asked for a permanent mechanism. What the record shows is a rebuild in progress and a case still being investigated, and no document here that says the two have met.

It is a record still being made, one examination at a time.