Protests have erupted across India over allegations of widespread cheating and corruption tainting the results of the country’s fiercely competitive national medical entrance exam.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is facing criticism for a perceived lack of oversight and integrity in the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) handling of the crucial exam, with the opposition seizing on the controversy to accuse his administration of exacerbating the country’s youth unemployment crisis.
Allegations of cheating and test leaks in the most recent National Eligibility Cum Entrance Exam Test – Undergraduate (NEET-UG) surfaced after the exam results, released on June 4, showed an unusually high number of students receiving top marks, affecting the overall benchmark for admission.
Every year, over 2 million students in India battle it out to get one of just 110,000 available spots to study medicine. Of the total seats available, around 60,000 are in state universities, with the rest in private colleges. Half the total seats are reserved for students from lower-income backgrounds.
The exam scandal has plunged hundreds of thousands of medical aspirants into career uncertainty. Students and their parents have filed dozens of court petitions alleging inconsistencies in the exam – ranging from flawed questions to widespread paper leaks.
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“The integrity of the NTA is at stake after this year’s paper leak allegations,” Vivek Pandey, an activist who has been providing students with support on their court petitions in the state of Bihar, told This Week in Asia.
According to Pandey, students and their families are demanding a swift and thorough investigation into what happened and a re-do of the NEET-UG exam under fair conditions.
“It is a matter of the lives of [2.4 million] students,” he said, explaining that students can spend months or even years preparing for the exam because a job in the medical field offers stability and security for Indians in a highly competitive and saturated labour market.
On Thursday, India’s Supreme Court urged the government and the NTA to respond to demands that the results of the exam be scrapped and a full investigation launched.
The NTA initially denied the allegations of cheating, saying in a statement that the “integrity of the examination had not been compromised” and attributing the uptick in high scorers to a larger number of students taking the exams.
But under growing pressure from students and activists, the NTA cancelled scores for some students and scheduled a re-exam for June 23.
Police in the states of Gujarat and Bihar have also made several arrests related to alleged exam fraud. In Bihar, authorities said at least 13 people were arrested, including four students.
Senior Bihar police official Manavjit Singh Dhillon told local news outlet The Times of India the suspects allegedly leaked the exam paper to at least 30 candidates in exchange for hundreds of thousands of rupees at a “safe house” the day before the test.
Unemployment in focus
Opposition parties have taken up the issue to criticise Modi’s newly formed government for a lack of accountability and attack it on a pressing election issue – high rates of unemployment among the country’s youth.
India’s official unemployment rate fell from 6 per cent in 2018 to 3.2 per cent last year, but a closer look at the statistics reveals why young Indians are so concerned – joblessness is highest among those aged 15-29 and also remains persistently high for those with a formal education.
According to the 2024 India Employment Report published by the International Labour Organisation and the Institute of Human Development, youth labour force participation declined from 54 per cent in 2000 to 42 per cent. The share of educated youth among the unemployed rose from 54.2 per cent in 2000 to 65.7 per cent in 2022.
Although India has been expanding its economy at a rapid pace – with the International Monetary Fund predicting it will become the world’s third-largest economy in three years – experts note the country has been struggling to generate enough new jobs.
Inequality, unemployment and joblessness were key issues in the country’s last general election, which concluded earlier this month. Although Modi won a third term as prime minister, his party was unable to win a parliamentary majority and, as a result, had to rely on coalition partners to form a new government.
Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of the Indian National Congress, the leading opposition party, said in a statement that the “Modi government has ruined the country’s education and recruitment system”.
“Our agenda is to secure jobs for the youth, affirmative action and freedom from paper leaks,” he added. “Our struggle for the rights of the youth will continue from the streets to parliament.”
Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi also berated the president, writing on social media platform X that “Narendra Modi, as usual, is maintaining silence on the tampering with the future of more than [2.4 million] students in the NEET examination”.
The Ministry of Education dismissed the allegations levelled against it by opposition parties, declaring its commitment to ensuring “the sanctity of examinations and protect the interests of students” in an official statement released on Thursday.
That same day, it also announced the cancellation of another undergraduate entrance exam administered by the NTA, the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET), saying an independent investigation found the integrity of the exam may have been compromised.
According to activist Pandey, the government has often struggled to “handle the overload of students in [this] exam”.
This is not the first time such scandals have occurred during important exams, he noted, adding that the NTA should consider a new process or multiple stages of testing in order to minimise irregularities and risks of paper leaks.
India’s Supreme Court said it would hear petitions on July 8 regarding the NEET-UG exam results.
Meanwhile, the health ministry on Saturday night postponed the NEET-PG tests scheduled for Sunday, saying the decision was “taken in the best interests of the students”.
