UGC-NET 2026 cancellation: 60% English, Commerce questions allegedly repeated from Dec 2024 paper

Synopsis

The UGC-NET 2026 exams for English and Commerce were cancelled after around 60% of questions were allegedly found to closely mirror those in the December 2024 examination, sources told ET. Repetitions were also detected in Geography, intensifying scrutiny of NTA’s question-setting process amid wider concerns over exam integrity.

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Around 60% of questions in the cancelled UGC-NET 2026 English and Commerce papers were allegedly repeated from December 2024, raising fresh concerns over NTA’s question-setting process.

New Delhi: The recent cancellation of the UGC-NET 2026 exam for English and Commerce was probably because 60% of the questions were near 'cut, copy, paste' from the December 2024 examination conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), top sources in the know confirmed to ET.

According to sources, it has come to light that there were some repetitions in Geography as well - once again bringing the focus back on the way question papers are set at NTA.

NTA on Sunday cancelled the June UGC-NET exam for English, Commerce and Sociology due to an internal official committee's worrying findings.

The committee found that the three papers contained "many factual, typographical, translation errors, including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in the stem wording of questions, grammatical errors, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation mistakes and non-standard coined terms for established concepts", alongside a "repetition of a significant number of questions previously administered", NTA said in a public notice issued on Sunday. NTA concluded that papers with such flaws do not meet the standards of fairness and error-free examination and that the defects cannot be cured merely by dropping questions after the challenge process.

While detailed findings of the NTA panel are not known, the focus, ET gathers, is on the question setting process, which has now been found to be clearly compromised - both in NEET-UG 2026 and UGC-NET 2026.

ET further gathers that NTA is now working on minimising human interface in the final levels of question paper setting to check the growing menace of exam leaks.

Amid mounting criticism, NTA on Monday sacked 50 staffers. Ten new professional leadership positions, including chief technology officer, chief finance officer, CISO, GM (test security) and GM (R&D and psychometrics), have been advertised and are being onboarded, the ministry informed.

After a high-level meeting, education minister Pralhad Joshi posted on X that the discussion focused on strengthening the education ecosystem through larger reforms, with emphasis on driving changes and strengthening the foundations of the education system. "We also deliberated on critical issues relating to school and higher education, with a focus on addressing key challenges and ensuring a more robust, responsive and future-ready education system," he said.