The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Saturday issued a clarification after allocating an examination center to a student from Nagpur in Abu Dhabi to retake the NEET UG 2026 exam, scheduled to be conducted on June 21.
A senior NTA official said that the candidate himself changed the examination city preferences through the portal, choosing Abu Dhabi as the first choice and Dubai as the second choice.
The student’s father, Abdullah Talib, said his son gave preference to Nagpur, Wardha and Bhandara centers for the NEET UG exam.
However, the NTA official said that the modification on the NTA portal was done using the same IP address that was used to download the admit card for the May 3 examination.
“Records indicate that on May 21, the candidate logged in and changed his exam city preferences, choosing Abu Dhabi as first choice and Dubai as second choice. The same IP address, traced to Nagpur, was used to download his admit card for the May 3 exam,” the official told HT.
He also said that the bank details for the refund were updated using the same IP address on May 24.
“He (candidate) also updated his bank details for refund on May 24, accessed the city notification slip on June 10 and downloaded his admit card on June 16 using the same IP address,” the official said.
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Despite receiving an “informal request on the evening of June 19” to change the center to Nagpur, the center has been changed, the NTA said.
“The admit card was downloaded on June 16 and was not reported to NTA.”
The NTA official said that though the admit card was downloaded on June 16, neither the candidate nor his family contacted the NTA or sent any mail.
“We have complete records of his activities on the NEET portal. Despite downloading the admit card on June 16, neither the candidate nor his family contacted NTA nor sent any mail regarding this. Instead, his father contacted the media on June 20, just a day before the exam. We are now allocating a center to him in Nagpur, but our cyber team is examining whether the changes were made by the candidate himself or by someone who may have accessed his account,” the official said.
The official added that the Nagpur case was the only case in which an outstation was allotted to a candidate and stressed that no other such cases had been detected. “We have responded to requests from many candidates seeking last-minute changes in examination centers,” the official added.
What NEET aspirant claimed?
The NEET student claimed that he chose Nagpur as his favorite city to take the exam on Sunday. However, the father said that he had been allocated a position abroad.
The family said that the candidate did not have a passport, and did not have enough time to obtain one.
“We are completely unable to send our child abroad to take the exam. He does not even have a passport, and there is no time to make travel arrangements,” the student’s father, Muhammad Talib, told ANI.
The incident sparked outrage, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lashing out at the National Training Agency, saying the agency was “testing the country’s patience.”
The mix-up came to light on Saturday, a day when nationwide mock exercises were taking place across the country ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination on Sunday.
The re-test will be conducted on June 21 from 2 pm to 5.15 pm in pen and paper mode across 551 cities in India and 14 cities abroad for over 22.79 lakh candidates.
