Elite Campus Entrance Exams in India Are Marked by Cheating and Polemics, 3 Million Students Protest

NEW DELHI – The best exam in India for medical school admissions and research programs is under unprecedented scrutiny amid mounting evidence of corruption and document leaks. That leaves the future of more than three million students in limbo.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), an autonomous body under India’s Ministry of Education responsible for administering national exams, is at the center of a controversy over the integrity of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), a national exam for medical aspirants held last month.

Exam results on June 4 showed irregularities in scores and an alarmingly high number of toppers, with a wave of arrests in various parts of the country over alleged exam leaks and multi-million dollar fraud.

Since then, several students have petitioned the Supreme Court and state high courts, staged protests in the scorching heat, and organized campaigns on social media platforms demanding an independent investigation and re-examination. About 2.4 million candidates take NEET, competing for 100,000 places in medical schools.

Questions Leaked on the Internet and Telegram

On June 19, Narendra Modi’s newly formed coalition government also canceled the National Eligibility Test (NET) that selects candidates for publicly funded research fellowships, just a day after one million students wrote the paper. “This follows reports that questions had been leaked on the internet and circulated on Telegram,” said Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s education minister.

However, the Minister did not specify how the newspaper was hacked. “The question leak is an institutional failure of the NTA. “We guarantee that there will be a reform committee and action will be taken,” he said. “We will not compromise on transparency. Student welfare is our priority.”

Meanwhile, Indian opposition leaders and legal experts criticized Modi’s government for its failure to stamp out corruption in the country’s elite exams that determine who will become doctors and scholars.

“NTA actually has a task to do [untuk melakukan ujian] and they have failed miserably,” said Rishi Shukla, a legal researcher in Lucknow, who has assisted many legal petitions against the NTA, reported Al Jazeera.

“Millions of students’ careers and lives are at risk. These gaps in inspections carry the stench of massive corruption in the system.”

Many Perfect Scores Become a Suspicious Thing

Although the country was focused on the results of India’s national elections on June 4, the NEET results surprised students and teachers: 67 students scored a perfect 720 out of 720, up from two students last year. Two years ago, the topper had scored 715 – the candidate with that score this year was ranked 225th.

At least two students scored 719 and 718 out of 720, a result that is statistically impossible under the NEET marking system (+4 for a correct answer and -1 for an incorrect answer), thus adding doubt to the allegations of some students committing irregularities.

In response, the NTA defended itself by saying that some students were awarded “thank you marks” – awarded by examiners at their discretion – in cases where candidates lost time during exams due to factors beyond their control.