The Congress on Thursday stepped up its attack on the Centre after candidates flagged alleged errors in the UGC-NET Sociology and English question papers, with the opposition party accusing the National Testing Agency (NTA) of repeated failures and targeting Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the conduct of national examinations.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the government had to deploy the "might of the armed forces" to conduct the re-NEET examination, yet issues continued to surface in exams conducted directly by the NTA.
"It required the might of the armed forces and the whole of the government at every level to conduct the re-NEET on June 21, 2026," Ramesh said on X.
"It reflected the complete failure of the Modi government to conduct exams without such unprecedented mobilisation," he added.
Claiming that the NTA's performance remained poor, Ramesh said, "When it comes to exams that are handled by the National Testing Agency (NTA) itself, the track record continues to be atrocious."
"Questions in the UGC-NET English Exam were wholesale lifted from past papers without any changes and the UGC-NET Sociology question paper was chock-full of spelling, translation, and grammar errors," Ramesh said while sharing screenshots of two media reports on X, including a report by The Telegraph Online highlighting concerns over the alleged lapses.
"The NTA is not fit for purpose. The Mantri Pradhan, on whose watch the NTA was supposed to be reformed and strengthened, has been exposed as incompetent and callous," Ramesh alleged.
"His continuation in office is a blot on our democracy and a reflection of the Pradhan Mantri's cynical political calculations," the Congress leader said.
Candidates who appeared for the UGC-NET Sociology examination on June 30 alleged that the paper contained several spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and poorly worded questions.
According to candidates, names and terms in the Sociology paper were riddled with errors, with "Ritzer" printed as "Putzer", "social" as "oval", "Parsons" as "Parsow", "Ghurye" as "Ghunye", "A R Desai" as "A K Desai", and "Nussbaum" as "Nusbaut".
Candidates also raised concerns over the English paper, with one candidate claiming that 67 of the 150 questions were identical to those asked in the 2024 examination.
The candidate further alleged that even the sequence of the answer options remained unchanged, raising concerns over the quality of the question paper and the integrity of the examination.
There was no response from the NTA on the allegations.
UGC-NET is conducted to determine the eligibility of candidates for the posts of Assistant Professor and admission to PhD programmes. The examination comprises Paper I, with 50 questions on teaching aptitude, reasoning ability and general awareness, and Paper II, which consists of 100 subject-specific multiple-choice questions.