NEW DELHI: National Testing Agency (NTA) has removed 600 experts from its panels and begun onboarding new specialists, while deciding to subject every paper to four levels of scrutiny before an examination.NTA director general apprised education minister Pralhad Joshi on Tuesday of the measures at a follow-up review meeting. The agency informed the ministry that it will also induct 20-25 officials over the next two to three weeks and shift its offices to new premises on a “war footing”, with Central Industrial Security Force teams deployed to reinforce security.Joshi, it is learnt, has directed that all necessary security and infrastructural arrangements be completed to ensure the smooth conduct of examinations. The agency’s wider recruitment plan was also reviewed at the meeting.The four-tier checking mechanism is intended to strengthen scrutiny at different stages of question-paper preparation and detect factual, language, translation and formatting errors before papers are finalised. The move comes after serious defects forced NTA to cancel the June 2026 UGC-NET papers in English, Commerce and Sociology and order fresh examinations.The agency had received several complaints about the three papers. A committee subsequently found multiple factual, typographical and translation errors, wrongly worded questions and significant repetition. It concluded that the defects were too extensive to be addressed merely by dropping disputed questions during the answer-key challenge process.Tuesday’s meeting followed Joshi’s first review Monday, when he ordered a comprehensive audit of NTA’s examination processes and sought a report on the corrective action taken. He also directed an overhaul of the agency’s confidential operations, including secluded rooms for sensitive work, air-gapped computer systems and mandatory device-deposit protocols.Officials had separately informed the minister that more than 50 NTA staff had been removed as part of the agency’s broader restructuring. This personnel action was not linked specifically to the errors in the three UGC-NET papers.
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NTA is also filling 10 professional leadership posts, including chief technology officer, chief finance officer, chief information security officer and general managers for test security, research and psychometrics. Private-sector specialists are being inducted in areas such as cybersecurity, psychometrics and question-paper design.
