An incompetent National Testing Agency, apathetic UGC and indifferent Ministry of Education – playing with the future of the youth

The UGC NET examination started today with thousands appearing in 24 subjects across centres all over the country. The entire process of conducting the examination has been a complete chaos right from the beginning. From releasing the hall ticket mere two days before the examination, to the last moment cancellation of examination for two subjects; NTA has made a mockery of the UGC NET examination process!

1. NTA released it’s first notice on 25th June, intimating the students that the UGC NET  examination for December 2021 and January 2022 cycle would take place in two phases. According to the notification, the first phase were to begin ONLY 12 days later on the 8th of July. The next phase would then be conducted after a gap of ONE MONTH on 8th August. Students were left anxious by this short and incomplete intimation by the NTA. They were not informed which subjects would have their exams in which phase and this meant that all students appearing in all subjects would now have to fast forward their exam preparations without knowing if they would be the ones sacrificed in NTA’s lucky draw.
2. While students were riddled with anxiety wondering if they should book their tickets and if so, then for which city, because the NTA hadn’t released the list of exam centres, there was complete silence from the NTA.
3. The next notification was released by NTA on 4th July 2022 declaring that 26 subjects would have their examination 4 DAYS LATER on 9th July. The hall tickets for the students concerned was NOT released by the NTA until 3 days later on 7th July. Students from all over the country were forced to hurriedly book their ticket.
4. Today, students who left their home at 5:30am to reach their exam centres far away on the first day of the NET examination, found a TWO HOURS long delay in the beginning of their examination.

The reason for the delay was the supposed break down of the NTA server leading to failure in the download of exam question papers.

When the exam finally began, it was riddled with spelling mistakes in subjects like Persian, International Relations, Performance Arts and many others. In subjects like Performance Arts passage questions did not have passages, and some had only options without any question.

The exam got over at 2 pm, just an hour before the second shift for the exam was supposed to begin. The examination for many PwD students went on further than 2 pm clashing with the timing of the second shift students.

– Students from Naini, Prayagraj have complained that in their centre, the systems stopped working after 10 minutes and the students had to return home without giving their exams.

Several students have written to us informing us that they missed the exams because of the ineptness of the NTA.

The exams for Marathi and Telugu got postponed due to mismanagement on the part of the agency. Many students who had booked their tickets after the ‘advanced city allotment slip’ received a message yesterday that their exam centres had been changed.

The CUET-UG exam is supposed to start from 15th July (in 6 days). However, admit cards haven’t been given yet. Students have no idea how the exams will be conducted given that there are so many subjects. The CUET-PG exam was supposed to happen in last of August. However, it doesn’t seem that NTA will be able to conduct it on time.

This irresponsible behaviour by the NTA-UGC-MoE trio shows that they have no planning on how to conduct exams. They are absolutely clueless! This inability to conduct exams on time also leads to an erratic academic calendar, which eventually harms the students by means of shortened semesters.