New Delhi, Aug 17: Leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Monday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the cancellation of the UGC-NET examinations and accused the government and the National Testing Agency (NTA) of failing to ensure a fair and reliable examination process.
His remarks came a day after the National Testing Agency (NTA) acknowledged multiple errors and repeated questions in the UGC-NET papers for English, Commerce and Sociology, and announced fresh examinations for all three subjects on September 9 and 10.
The agency said a committee constituted after receiving “several complaints” found “many factual, typographical, translation errors” in the papers. These included misspelt names of prominent scholars, distorted book titles, incorrectly worded questions, grammatical and punctuation errors, and non-standard terms for established concepts. The committee also found a “significant number” of questions that had appeared in previous examinations
Slamming the government, Rahul Gandhi said, “Modi ji, look at what your NTA has just done. UGC-NET exams for Sociology, English and Commerce were held between 22 and 30 June. Nearly two months later, NTA has cancelled all three because it set faulty papers and repeated old questions.”
Taking a swipe at the NTA, he said that thousands of candidates who prepared for years, filled forms, paid the fees, travelled to distant centres, “must now do it all again in September”.
“NTA makes the mistake but the student serves the sentence,” the Gandhi scion said, adding, “I said this in Kota, in Dehradun, in Prayagraj, and I will keep saying it – this is no longer an education system. It is an extraction machine. It takes your money, your years, your mental health, and your confidence and returns nothing. Not even a job.”
“NTA still won’t answer the real question – were these papers leaked before the exam?” the Rae Bareli MP asked.
He said: “Just like every other arm of the Modi government, NTA never says it’s their fault. Just like every other compromised paper, I am absolutely sure there will be no accountability.”
He also said that Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation was the first step, not the last.
“NTA’s leadership must be held accountable too,” he said, adding, “To every student sitting this exam again in September – you are not the problem.”
“PM Modi built a system that cannot run an exam and then blames the students who take it. Your years are being stolen and we will not stop until PM Modi answers for it,” he added.
