Computer-based testing must be mandated, not recommended. An independent, court-monitored committee must oversee the re-conduct of NEET 2026. The Education Minister must answer to Parliament, not to a press conference. If the NTA cannot be fundamentally overhauled, it must be replaced.
Dr Musawir Mohsin Parsa (PT)
Twenty-two lakh students have been robbed of their future; not by fate, not by failure, but by a system that has rotted from the inside, and a government that keeps repainting the walls of a burning house.
It has happened again. On May 3, 2026, over 22.79 lakh students across India sat down to write the most important examination of their lives, NEET-UG, the sole gateway to medical education in this country. Nine days later, the National Testing Agency announced the cancellation of the entire examination. The reason? A question paper had been circulating on WhatsApp groups for up to a month before the test day. This is not news. This is déjà vu wearing a stethoscope.
The mechanics of the betrayal are almost laughably brazen. Investigators found that a document containing approximately 410 questions had been doing the rounds on messaging apps well before May 3. Of those, nearly 120 questions from the Chemistry section reportedly matched the actual paper exactly. Not approximately. Exactly. This was not a coincidence. This was a conspiracy: coordinated, purchased, and executed at scale while the NTA sat behind its press releases about “full security protocols.”
“The paper was leaking while the NTA was busy issuing advisories about carrying a valid ID to the exam hall.”
THE NTA’S HALL OF SHAME
Let us be precise about what the National Testing Agency is and what it has become. It was created to be the gold standard of examination integrity in India: a centralised, professional body that would end the chaos of state-by-state entrance tests. Instead, it has delivered chaos on an industrial scale. The 2024 NEET scandal shook the country. A high-level committee was constituted. Reforms were promised. A transition to computer-based testing was recommended. None of it materialised into action. The NTA went back to pen-and-paper. The paper leaked again.
On May 7, four days after the exam, the NTA received inputs about alleged malpractice. It quietly escalated the matter to central agencies on May 8. It waited. It said nothing to 22 lakh students who were refreshing websites, planning their futures, and calculating their scores. The official cancellation notice came on May 12. Nine days of silence. Nine days during which the NTA knew something was deeply wrong and chose institutional self-preservation over student welfare.
The Federation of All India Medical Association has since moved the Supreme Court, alleging in the court’s own legal language a “systemic failure.” FAIMA is not wrong. The petition demands the dissolution of NTA and its replacement with an autonomous, technologically advanced body. It also calls for a shift to computer-based testing, the same recommendation that gathered dust after 2024. The Supreme Court must now do what the government has failed to: hold the NTA accountable, not just the paper-leakers it arrests for optics.
A WORD ON THE GOVERNMENT
The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested five individuals. Searches are ongoing. More arrests are expected. Good. But arrests of foot soldiers are not accountability. They are theatre.
The question that demands an answer is this: Why does India still conduct the world’s largest single medical entrance examination on paper, in an era when even mid-school boards are going digital? Why, after the catastrophe of 2024, was the recommendation to go computer-based quietly shelved? Who made that decision? Who benefits from keeping the exam analogue, fragile, and leakable?
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay has used this moment to reiterate his state’s long-standing opposition to NEET, arguing that the exam systematically disadvantages rural students, government school students, and those from economically weaker sections. He is not entirely wrong. A single exam designed to serve all of India, administered by an agency that cannot protect its own question paper, is neither meritocratic nor equitable. It is a lottery with extra steps.
FOR THE STUDENT READING THIS
If you are one of the 22.79 lakh students who appeared on May 3, this column is, ultimately, for you. You woke up before dawn. You revised for months, perhaps years. Some of you are on your second or third attempt. One student, Delhi-based Umama Ilhaq, has now had all three of her NEET attempts marred by operational failure or scandal since 2024. For you, this is not a statistic. It is your life.
You deserve to be furious. The NSUI protests at Shastri Bhavan, the AISA demonstrations at Jantar Mantar, the organisations marching across the country: they are right. Channel that anger. File petitions. Demand accountability, not just a re-exam date. Because a re-exam alone announced within seven days, conducted in 40 to 45 days, does not repair what has been broken. It merely reschedules the burden onto you, the one person in this entire chain who did nothing wrong.
The re-exam will come. It will likely be harder. You will prepare again. You will appear again. And you will walk into that hall carrying not just your admit card but the weight of a system that has repeatedly failed to protect your trust. That is profoundly unjust, and no press release from the NTA can call it otherwise.
“Catch the leakers by all means — but also prosecute the architects of a system so brittle that a WhatsApp forward could bring it down.”
WHAT MUST HAPPEN NOW
CBI must pursue not just the paper-sellers but the source within the printing and distribution chain. Computer-based testing must be mandated, not recommended, not tabled, mandated before the re-exam is even scheduled. An independent, court-monitored committee must oversee the re-conduct of NEET 2026. The Education Minister must answer to Parliament, not to a press conference. And the NTA, if it cannot be fundamentally overhauled, must be replaced.
India produces more NEET aspirants than any country on earth produces medical students. These are not numbers. They are children who chose the hardest path, years of sacrifice, financial pressure, and parental hope, because they wanted to heal people. The least this nation owes them is an examination system that cannot be purchased on WhatsApp or Telegram.
THE NUMBERS AT A GLANCE
• 22.79 lakh students affected
• May 3, 2026 — exam conducted
• May 12, 2026 — cancellation announced
• ~410 questions reportedly leaked on WhatsApp
• ~120 Chemistry questions allegedly matched the actual paper exactly
• Leak active 15–30 days before the exam
• 5 arrested by CBI across Rajasthan and Maharashtra
• Some students on their 3rd attempt — all three marred by scandal
The writer is a physical therapist and educator
pa**********@***il.com