Millions of students at risk: India’s elite exams hit by corruption ‘scam’

More than 3 million aspirants took India’s top tests for medical and research schools. Their future is now uncertain.

New Delhi, India – India’s top examinations for admissions into medical schools and research programmes have come under unprecedented scrutiny amid mounting evidence of corruption and paper leaks, leaving the future of more than three million students hanging in the balance.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), an autonomous body under India’s Ministry of Education that is responsible for holding the nationwide examinations, is at the centre of these controversies over the integrity of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), a national exam for medical aspirants held last month.

The exam results on June 4 revealed irregularities in marks and a dramatically high number of toppers, with a wave of arrests in different parts of the country for alleged paper leaks and multimillion-dollar cheating scams.

Since then, several students have approached the Supreme Court and state high courts, staged protests in the scorching heat and organised campaigns on social media platforms demanding independent probes and a re-examination. About 2.4 million candidates took the NEET, competing for 100,000 spots in medical schools.

On 19 June, Narendra Modi’s newly formed coalition government also cancelled the National Eligibility Test (NET) that selects candidates for public-funded research fellowships, just a day after a million students wrote the paper. This followed reports that questions had been leaked “in the darknet” and were circulated on Telegram, said Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s education minister, on Thursday.