Weeks after NEET leak, NTA faces fresh allegations of UGC-NET paper leak via 100-page PDF

The National Testing Agency is in trouble again. Weeks after the NEET-UG paper leak triggered a political storm, fresh allegations have surfaced that the UGC-NET June 2026 sociology paper was compromised before it was even sat.

The Education Ministry has asked NTA to investigate claims that a 100-page PDF, one allegedly linked to the internal question paper setting process, was circulated ahead of the exam. Nearly 90 questions in that document matched the actual paper. NTA officials did not respond to calls or messages before this report was filed.

What is alleged

The controversy broke open on Wednesday when Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi took to X to raise the alarm. Sharing a media report, he said the PDF that surfaced before the exam should have been accessible only to NTA insiders.

"The serious allegations that have surfaced regarding last week's UGCNET exam are utterly shocking. Just a few weeks after the NEET paper leak, reports are now emerging that a 100-page PDF was circulated right before the UGC-NET exam," he said.

Gandhi further alleged that the question paper was being sold for Rs 2.25 lakh across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan, and claimed the same network had also offered papers for upcoming exams including CSIR-NET, HTET and ADA.

Not the only problem with this paper

The leak allegations are compounded by a separate set of complaints from candidates who actually sat the UGC-NET sociology exam. Several reported that the paper contained multiple spelling errors, distorted names of key academic thinkers and poor Hindi translations, raising serious questions about the quality of NTA's paper-setting and moderation processes.

Why it matters

The UGC-NET is used to determine eligibility for assistant professorship, junior research fellowships and admission to PhD programmes, making it one of the most consequential exams for India's academic community.

The latest row comes at a moment when the government had already promised stricter safeguards in high-stakes national exams following the NEET-UG fallout. With UGC-NET now under the same cloud, pressure on NTA and the Education Ministry is mounting once again.