New Delhi, June 20 (EFE).- Indian authorities have canceled an examination attended by nearly a million candidates due to suspicions of a question leak, adding to the existing chaos over alleged irregularities in another major test.
“To ensure the highest level of transparency and sanctity of the examination process, the government has decided that the UGC-NET June 2024 Examination be cancelled,” said the ministry in a statement on Wednesday.
UGC-NET was held on Tuesday in over 300 cities across India to recruit assistant professors and research staff for Indian universities. Of the 1.1 million registered candidates, more than 940,000 participated in the exam, according to the National Testing Agency (NTA), which oversees the test.
Two days after the examination, Indian authorities announced that a new test would be scheduled and launched an official investigation into the matter.
“Will the education minister take responsibility for this lax system?” Ankush Bhatnagar, the general secretary of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), affiliated with the opposition Congress Party (INC), asked on the social network X.
The cancellation of this exam coincides with ongoing protests in India over alleged irregularities in another significant test, the university entrance exam for medical careers, known as NEET.
About 2.4 million students took this exam on May 5, but the results, published at the beginning of June, led to reports of suspicious marks, such as an unusually high number of perfect scores and extra marks for some applicants.
Regarding NEET, the Ministry of Education stated it is “committed to ensuring the sanctity of examinations and protecting the interest of students” and has commissioned a detailed report from the police in the northern state of Bihar on suspicions of leaks.
Each year, India reports cases of arrests, question leaks, or repeated exams due to discovered cheating, often implicating hundreds of people. EFE
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