NTA Under Fire Again: UGC-NET Retest Ordered After Major Paper Errors

NTA is once again under scrutiny after announcing a re-conduct of the UGC-NET June 2026 examination for English, Commerce and Sociology. A committee constituted to examine complaints found factual, typographical and translation errors across the three papers. In the English paper, 67 of 150 questions were reportedly repeated from the 2024 examination with the same answer options, while the Commerce paper had more than 80 questions repeated from previous years. The Sociology paper was also flagged for spelling, grammatical, factual and translation errors, as well as unclear and out-of-syllabus questions.

The retest will be conducted on September 9 and 10 at no additional fee, with NTA saying the number of qualifying candidates will not be reduced and subject-wise allocations will remain unchanged. The episode has triggered criticism from Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, while NSUI workers protested outside the NTA office in Delhi. NTA has announced measures to strengthen its question-paper preparation and review internal processes. But with the testing agency facing another examination controversy, questions remain over whether these measures will be enough to restore confidence among students.