What Is Behind India’s Education Minister’s Refusal To Reform NTA?

Despite several orders and recommendations of the Supreme Court and the Parliamentary Standing Committee, the Union Government did not structurally reform the National Testing Agency (NTA), and also did not take appropriate actions that helped the education mafia of the country to strengthen its grip over the agency. In the name of taking “tamper-proof exams” for much needed “education reform”, NTA is earning hundreds of crore from students, while by continued paper leaks education mafia is earning huge money. What surprises even more is the India’s Education Minister’s contemptuous statement on his not implementing parliamentary panel’s recommendations on the ground that there were opposition members in the committee. What is then behind it – an arrogance of his government, some people’s financial interests, or something else?

The decision to launched NTA was taken by the Union Cabinet meeting held under PM Modi’s chairmanship and was established in November 2027 with a very good business model, with one-time grant of Rs 25 crore at inception. Thereafter it operates without government funding. It sets question papers and heavily relies on outsourcing, because it does not have enough staff or its own permanent, nationwide infrastructure for conducting exams. Here lies the root cause of repeated paper leaks.

Nevertheless, between 2018-19 and 2023-24 it collected Rs3512.98 crore in exam or application fees. Parliamentary panel has said that it had a surplus of Rs448.21 crore that it could have used to plug the security gaps. Such a huge earning was because it collects huge fees. In the case of NEET-UG 2026, that was cancelled on May 12 due to paper leak, the fees collected were Rs1,700 from General, Rs1,600 from OBC-NCL/EWS, and Rs1,000 for SC/ST/PwD/ and Third Gender candidates. The total fee was about 355 crore.

The parliamentary panel on education, it its December 2025 report, recommended that NTA deploy the corpus to build in-house testing capacity or strengthen vendor monitoring. Earlier in March, the same panel has asked the NTA to produce annual report, but it had not produced any. It was therefore, the panel has reiterated again that it must produce its annual report and submit to the parliament.

The Supreme Court of India in its judgement in July 2024, on the NEET UG 2024 paper leak case, had said that NTA “must now avoid the flip flops which it has made in this case.” The court had recorded serious concern and directed for structural reforms. The court had expanded the mandate of the seven-member expert committee constituted by the Union Government under former ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan and directed it to recommend reforms on examination security, transportation of papers, CCTV surveillance, candidate verification, encryption protocols, technological safeguards, real-time monitoring, grievance redressal, and international best practices. The government has even filed compliance report in the Supreme Court in December 2024. However, the paper leak in NEET-UG 2026, shows even wider leak network under the education mafia.

Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi has demanded from the Prime Minister of India that the Union Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan be sacked. The Congress chief whip in the Rajya Sabha Jairam Ramesh has moved a privilege notice against Dharmendra Pradhan and said that he had “deliberately lowered the stature and prestige of the institution of the standing committee.”

On May 15, Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan had said in reply to a question by a reporter during his press conference as to why the government did not implement parliamentary panel’s recommendation, “I will not comment on Parliamentary Standing Committee red flags. I will speak about the High-Level Committee of Experts (HLCE)/Radhakrishnan Committee. The Parliament Standing Committee has members from the Opposition. They write things in a certain manner; you also know that. Hence, I won’t speak on the standing committee.”

Congress leader Ramesh has said, “He has made these outrageous remarks while presiding over the rot in the Education Ministry that is destroying the future of lakhs of youth across the country.” In his privilege notice, Jairam Ramesh said these “derogatory” comments reveal the Minister’s “contempt for Parliament”. He said that Pradhan’s comments also “seek to malign parliamentarians, parliamentary committees and the Parliament of India. … The Minister’s comments are also tantamount to imputing dishonourable motives to members of parliamentary committees themselves.”

It is still a mystery, as to why Union Minister of Education, behaves in a way that goes against the critics of the NTA’s failures and repeated paper leaks, while NTA’s reforms have been delayed under his leadership, despite the orders of the Supreme Court of India and the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s recommendations?

Dharmendra Pradhan as Union Ministry of Education is politically and administratively responsible for repeated paper leaks under NTA functioning under his ministry. In India’s parliamentary system, ministries are accountable for the functioning of agencies under them. Repeated paper leaks raise questions about ministerial oversight. Moreover, recurring paper leaks indicate systemic governance failures. It should be noted that in case of NEET-UG 2024 paper leak he himself had admitted that as an “institutional failure” and had announced reforms. However, that proved to be a political statement only, and paper leak continued even in May 2026.

Petitions have been also been filed in the Supreme Court of India demanding even dismantling of the NTA, or replace it by another dependable institution, or fundamentally restructure it. Petitioners have also demanded accountability.

In the meantime, on May 18, the parliamentary panel has summoned the NTA chief to appear before it on May 21, to review their recommendation of reforms, that Union Minister of Education had refused to implement. The agenda includes a review of the implementation of the K Radhakrishnan Committee report on NTA reforms and an update on the investigation into the alleged NEET-UG paper leak case. (IPA Service)