The National Eligibility Test for Undergraduate Entrance Test or NEET-UG will be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) in Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode from next year instead of Paper-Pencil Test (PPT) mode in which students answer questions on an Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced on Friday.
In his first statement after NTA canceled May 12 NEET-UG 2026 (held on May 3) following allegations of paper leakage, Pradhan said candidates will get 15 extra minutes to write NEET re-examination on June 21.
He also said that the government bears responsibility for a “breach of leadership” despite following the recommendations of the Radhakrishnan Committee – a seven-member committee formed after the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak controversy to strengthen NTA.
Pradhan said that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will “dig deep” into the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak issue and “no one will be saved this time. No one was saved last time either.”
Read also: ‘Breach in chain of command, we take responsibility’: Govt after NEET paper leak
“Despite implementing the recommendations of the Radhakrishnan Committee, this incident happened. The root cause of it is the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) based examination. From next year, the NEET exam will be conducted in CBT (Computer Based Test) mode,” Pradhan said while addressing a press conference at his residence.
The Radhakrishnan Committee in October 2024 made a “strong case” for moving NEET-UG to computer-based testing – calling it a “sure way forward” against paper leaks.
NTA Director General Abhishek Singh on Thursday told HT, “We will conduct the exam in CBT mode if the health department gives us in writing that they want us to conduct the exam in CBT mode. It will take about 20 shifts to administer about 2.2 million NEET candidates, and we will have to follow the normalization process to ensure fairness to all students.”
The normalization process involves adjusting scores to compensate for difficulty differences across transitions based on relative performance within each session.
The NTA on May 12 canceled NEET-UG 2026, a decision that came after at least 120 questions in the ‘guess paper’ were found overlapping with the exam paper on May 3.
A guess sheet is a set of possible questions prepared by subject experts and teachers based on previous exam trends.
The decision affected more than 2.2 million students who had been preparing for exams for months, if not years. NEET NTA will refund the exam fees to students and conduct the re-test on June 21.
Pradhan said that the admit card for re-test of NEET will be released by June 14 and students will be given additional 15 minutes in the June 21 exam.
“Another point was raised regarding formalities in the examination, such as signing the OMR sheet at the beginning and end. This has reduced the basic time available to the students. Considering the examination time is from 2 pm to 5 pm, NTA has decided to extend it by 15 minutes,” he said.
Asked about possible weakness in security measures for exams due to International Yoga Day on June 21, Pradhan said: “Yoga Day will be celebrated in the morning and exams will be held at noon. We have fixed the date after considering the matter.”
Read also: How Churu’s ‘guess paper’ led to cancellation of NEET-UG, India’s largest entrance exam
The RBI told a Delhi court on Thursday that the leak of the NEET-UG 2026 question paper was traced back to a source within NTA – an allegation the court recorded in its order, stating that Shubham Khairnar obtained the paper from a Pune-based person who in turn obtained it from an “NTA source”.
The CBI has arrested seven people in this case so far.
“The CBI will investigate the matter thoroughly. The CBI will investigate the matter thoroughly,” Pradhan said when asked about the involvement of NTA insiders in the paper leak. The Central Bank of Iraq is a trustworthy agency and will investigate matters smoothly.”
Earlier on May 13, HT first reported that a member of Radhakrishnan’s committee had said: “If there was a leak, it would likely have happened at the upstream stage — at the higher-level question compilation stage, within the NTA.”
At least two students who appeared for NEET-UG 2026 – one in Goa and the other in Uttar Pradesh – died due to suicide after the paper was cancelled.
“I have no words to explain the loss of precious lives. It is our responsibility that such incidents do not happen in the future,” Pradhan said.
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