NEET-UG 2026 Leak: Supreme Court Says Accountability Must Be Fixed, Seeks NTA Reform Roadmap

The Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe made the observations while hearing a batch of petitions arising from the recent NEET-UG 2026 paper leak and subsequent cancellation of the examination.

“The real problem won’t stop till actual accountability arises… Unless you identify the duty holders, it will be a diffused obligation,” the Bench remarked, stressing that responsibility within the examination framework cannot remain vague or institutional alone.

Calling the incident “very traumatic”, the Court said students and their families should not suffer due to repeated failures in conducting national-level examinations. “We cannot disappoint our students. It is not merely the student, it’s the family too… It is so much of emotions, love, time, years of study,” the Bench observed.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Union government, agreed that accountability must ultimately be fixed somewhere and informed the Court that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was personally monitoring the situation.

“The Hon’ble Prime Minister is personally supervising this,” Mehta submitted.

The Court also criticised what it described as “ad-hocism” in Indian institutions and emphasised the need to strengthen institutional memory and expertise within the NTA. Accordingly, the Bench directed the Ministry of Human Resource Development, instead of the Union Health Ministry, to file a comprehensive affidavit detailing reforms proposed for annual examinations and measures to improve NTA’s institutional and intellectual capacity by adding domain experts. “The endeavor is to ensure that NTA would have the wherewithal, physical and intellectual, to ensure that no incident such as 2024/2026 examination occur,” the Court said while listing the matter for further hearing in July.

The petitions before the Court include pleas seeking restructuring or replacement of the NTA, transition of NEET examinations to a Computer-Based Test (CBT) format, enhanced digital safeguards, publication of centre-wise results and judicial supervision of the re-examination process.

One petition filed by the Federation of All India Medical Association sought re-conduct of NEET-UG 2026 under the supervision of a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge. Another plea filed by the United Doctors Front challenged the legal structure of the NTA itself and sought dissolution of the agency in its present form. A separate petition by RJD MP Sudhakar Singh and others has demanded immediate migration of NEET examinations to a CBT-based system.

The Court also questioned former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan, who heads the high-powered committee constituted after the 2024 NEET controversy, over implementation of the committee’s recommendations. “Despite your monitoring… if this incident has happened, then there would be a problem with the recommendation. Or the monitoring may not have happened,” the Bench observed.

Radhakrishnan informed the Court that around 60 recommendations had been made, most of which were already implemented, while some were still under process. The Court, however, indicated that lessons must be drawn from recurring failures and said NTA needed a permanent expert-driven institutional mechanism rather than ad-hoc arrangements.

The matter will now be heard in July.

Notably, on May 25, the Court had expressed concern over the functioning of the National Testing Agency (NTA) in the aftermath of recurring NEET-UG controversies, observing that it was “sad” that the agency had not learnt lessons from the earlier paper leak episode.

Case Title: Federation of All India Medical Association v. National Testing Agency and Ors.

Bench: Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe

Hearing Date: May 29, 2026