The National Testing Agency cancelled NEET-UG 2026 on Tuesday, nine days after 2.27 million students sat for the examination across 551 cities, after central agencies confirmed that the question paper had been compromised. Questions had been available on the phones of some individuals as early as May 1 — two days before the exam.
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It is the second time in two years that the NEET-UG has been under a cloud. The testing agency has handed the case to the CBI and said a retest will be scheduled soon.
“We take responsibility for what has happened; it was wrong,” NTA director general Abhishek Singh said at a press conference, in one of the most direct admissions of institutional failure the agency has made since its founding in 2018. “Paper leaks must end with immediate effect.”
The cancellation was triggered by a spree of complaints and police tip-offs that began to trickle in the two days after the exam. Upon verification with central agencies, the match was confirmed.
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Singh said the agency had acted on every input it received before the exam — including blocking 120 Telegram channels that were selling fake papers claiming to be genuine — but he pointed to a specific tip-off: a whistleblower’s post-exam alert that proved the breach had already occurred. The leaked PDF had been available on the phones of a few people on May 1 and 2. “This was against our zero-tolerance policy,” Singh said.
“This would have impacted the future of over 22 lakh (2.2 million) students preparing hard for the exam. In their interest, we took this tough step.”
A re-examination will be conducted, Singh said, with the schedule to be announced within the next seven to 10 days. No additional fee will be charged; fees from the first exam will be refunded.
The agency’s effort, Singh said, will be to conduct the re-exam in the shortest possible time so that the academic calendar and admission schedule of medical colleges are not disrupted.
Despite repeated attempts, Singh did not respond to HT’s specific queries on what investigative findings had led to the cancellation decision. Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan refused to respond to media questions on the cancellation.
Investigators have traced a multi-state network behind the leak — one that moved the question paper from its point of origin through a chain of middlemen across at least six states before it reached students on the night of May 2.
A handwritten “guess paper” of 410 questions, with 120 drawn from the original NEET paper embedded within it to disguise the leak, was circulated through coaching centres, paying guest hostels, and a paid WhatsApp group.
Rajasthan’s Sikar — the country’s second-largest coaching hub, whose centres produced more top-percentile NEET scorers than any other city in 2024 — emerged as the network’s primary distribution node. Thirteen persons have been detained; the full network spans at least 45 individuals, officials of Rajasthan’s Special Operations Group, which led the crackdown before handing the case to the CBI on Tuesday, said.
The scale of disruption is without precedent in NTA’s history. The 2.27 million students who appeared in pen-and-paper mode across India and 15 cities abroad must now prepare again — with no confirmed date, no certainty of scoring comparably, and an admission cycle for MBBS, BDS, and AYUSH courses thrown into disarray.
Abhishek Verma, an aspirant from Lucknow, had been tracking the provisional answer key released on May 6 and believed he was on course for a government medical college seat.
“Based on the provisional answer keys, I was scoring 620 marks out of 720 and I would have got a government medical college for studying MBBS. Now I have to study again for the examination and score similar or more marks as the paper might be tougher than the one held on May 3,” he said. Calling the development “demotivating”, Verma said restarting the final phase of preparation would be mentally draining.
The announcement set off protests across the country. In Delhi, Students’ Federation of India activists clashed with police during a demonstration demanding the dissolution of the NTA, with protesters jumping barricades and scuffling with security forces. Former JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, who was among those calling for the agency’s removal, said the protest reflected years of accumulated grievance. “This happens every year since the formation of the National Testing Agency, but the government is doing nothing. We are demanding the dismissal of a system like NTA,” she said.
Separately, NSUI members burnt effigies of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and NTA chairman Pradeep Joshi.
The 2026 cancellation arrives against the shadow of a crisis in 2024. That year, an unprecedented 67 candidates out of more than 24 lakh examinees secured the top rank, triggering allegations of paper leaks, grace-mark irregularities and inflated cut-offs that led to nationwide protests, Supreme Court intervention, and a CBI probe. Dr Lakshya Mittal, president of the United Doctors Front, said the 2024 investigation’s unfinished business had left the ground open for a repeat. “If a proper investigation of 2024 had been conducted, this situation would not have arisen again in 2026,” he said.
NEET-UG is the gateway to undergraduate medical education in India — 180 compulsory questions, 720 marks, three hours, one shot at a government college seat for students who have often spent years preparing. Singh acknowledged the weight of what had been undone. “This is distressing for everyone involved,” he said. “We will not let any irregularities take place in any exam.”
