Rahul Gandhi seeks accountability over UGC-NET exam cancellation by NTA

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Monday attacked the government after the National Testing Agency announced a retest for three papers of the UGC-NET June 2026 examination, with Rahul Gandhi demanding that the NTA leadership be held accountable for it and asserting that his party will not stop until Prime Minister Narendra Modi answers for students' years being "stolen".

Gandhi alleged that the education system was "an extraction machine".

"Modi ji, look at what your NTA has just done. UGC-NET exams for Sociology, English and Commerce were held between 22 and 30 June. Nearly two months later, NTA has cancelled all three because it set faulty papers and repeated old questions," he said.

Gandhi said thousands of candidates who prepared for years, filled forms, paid the fees, travelled to distant centres, must now do it all again in September.

"NTA makes the mistake but the student serves the sentence," he said.

"I said this in Kota, in Dehradun, in Prayagraj, and I will keep saying it -- this is no longer an education system. It is an extraction machine. It takes your money, your years, your mental health, and your confidence and returns nothing. Not even a job," the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

"NTA still won't answer the real question -- were these papers leaked before the exam?

"Just like every other arm of the Modi government, NTA never says it's their fault. Just like every other compromised paper, I am absolutely sure there will be no accountability," Gandhi also said.

He said Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation was the first step, not the last. "NTA's leadership must be held accountable too," he demanded.

"To every student sitting this exam again in September - you are not the problem. PM Modi built a system that cannot run an exam and then blames the students who take it. Your years are being stolen and we will not stop until PM Modi answers for it," Gandhi said in his post.

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said that nearly two months after the UGC NET June 2026 exam, the NTA itself admitted that the question papers for English, commerce, and sociology contained factual, typographical, and translation errors.

"Names of prominent scholars were misspelled, book titles were garbled, there were errors in the language of the questions, mistakes in grammatical and gender-number agreement, punctuation errors, and non-standard terms were used for established concepts," Ramesh said in his post in Hindi on X.

Not only that, the NTA's committee found that a large number of such questions were repeated - ones that had already been asked in previous exams, he said.

Now, the exams for these three subjects will be held again on September 9 and 10, the Congress leader pointed out.

"Our question is: Why should the country's students bear the punishment for NTA's mistakes? Does it really take nearly two months to detect such serious errors?" Ramesh said.

How will the losses be compensated -- and by whom -- for those students who, due to this delay, will be deprived of admission to this year's academic session in various universities, he asked.

"The question isn't just why the exam is being held again. The question is how a question paper with such serious errors was prepared and approved in the first place," Ramesh said.

Whose responsibility is this negligence in a national-level exam tied to the careers of millions of young people, the Congress general secretary asked.

"Why should candidates pay the price for mistakes in the examination system? These questions aren't just for the thousands of students in these three subjects. The government must explain why the results for thousands of candidates who have already taken the exams in 84 other subjects are delayed," he said.

Ramesh asserted that for the young people who took the exam in June, every day matters.

Opportunities like JRF, Assistant Professor eligibility, and PhD admissions are linked to the results, he pointed out.

"Will the Prime Minister, who chides the country's youth from the ramparts of the Red Fort, say anything about his own responsibility? The youth of the country demands answers," Ramesh said.

The National Students' Union of India (NSUI) staged a protest outside the National Testing Agency (NTA) office here over alleged irregularities in the UGC-NET June 2026 examination and demanded that the testing agency be scrapped.

Later, addressing a press conference, Indian Youth Congress chief Uday Bhanu Chib said the country needs to eliminate the "paper leak Naxal".

"Perhaps the BJP government wants to bring these mistakes to light in instalments, so that Gen-Z's anger doesn't erupt against Modi ji and Amit Shah," Chib said.

Chib said he party demands that students should be provided the facility to fill forms for all exams for just 1 rupee.

Addressing the presser along with Chib, Chayanika Uniyal, who teaches at the Delhi University, asked whether will action be taken against the officials and experts who made such a serious mistake.

"For the officials and experts against whom action will be taken, will their names be made public? Will the students be compensated by the government? For the students whose admission deadlines have passed, will the government provide them any compensation?" she said.

The NTA on Sunday announced the retest for three papers of the UGC-NET June 2026 examination -- English, commerce and sociology -- following complaints about several errors in these papers.