New Delhi: The National Testing Agency (NTA) announced on Sunday that it will re-conduct the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET)
for three subjects: English, Commerce, and Sociology. The decision comes after candidates pointed out widespread errors in the exams held between 22 June and 30 June.
The UGC-NET is a national-level test used to determine eligibility for Assistant Professor posts and admissions to PhD programmes across Indian universities. This marks another major setback for the testing agency this year, following the cancellation of the May NEET-UG exam over a paper leak.
Candidates raised voices shortly after the June exams, prompting the testing body to set up an expert panel to look into the complaints.
Mistakes and repeated questions
The issues flagged by students and teachers ranged from basic spelling mistakes to outright question recycling. In the Sociology paper, prominent theorists’ names were heavily mangled, such as Ritzer printed as Putzer, Ghurye as Ghunye, and Parsons as Parsow.
In English and Commerce, several questions appeared to be copied word-to-word from past test cycles, particularly December 2024 and 2025, right down to the order of the multiple-choice options. English candidates encountered repeated questions on texts like Kanthapura and The Life Divine, alongside identical matching questions on theorists like Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. Commerce students saw previously used corporate tax questions and accounting problems with identical numerical figures.
“The Committee found that the three papers had many factual, typographical, translation errors, including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in the stem wording of questions, grammatical errors, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation mistakes, and non-standard coined terms for established concepts, as well as repetition of a significant number of questions previously administered. The Committee recommended that, in the interest of holding a fair and error-free examination, these three papers should be re-conducted,” NTA’s statement.
Revised exam date
The re-examinations are scheduled for September. The English paper will take place on 9 September from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, followed by Commerce from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm on the same day. The Sociology examination will be held on 10 September from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm.
The agency confirmed that candidates will not be charged any extra fee for the re-test. Updated admit cards and exam centre details will be released on the official NTA website.
