The new law aims to tackle malpractices, unfair means and cheating in government recruitment examinations including leaking of question papers & answer keys, tampering of exam documents, computer networks and answer sheets.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Friday has announced to postpone the upcoming CSIR UGC NET Examinations due to “unavoidable circumstances” and “logistic issues”.

The exam was scheduled to be held next week between June 25 – 27.

“The revised schedule for the conduct of this examination will be announced later through the official website”, read the public notification by the NTA.

This comes after multiple reports of NEET UG exam irregularities and cancellation of UGC NET Examination by the NTA.

National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET UG exams is a national examination conducted by the NTA for admissions in UG medical programs.

Multiple irregularities had surfaced during 2024 NEET UG exam after it was held on May 5. Allegations of paper leak were reported with over 67 candidates scoring perfect 750/750 points of which six candidates were from the same centre in Haryana.

Compensatory / Grace marks were granted to 1,563 candidates for which NTA clarified was due to “time loss” of the candidates “during the originally scheduled examination”.

Over 24 lakh candidates had appeared for the test across 4,750 centres in 571 cities. The results were declared on June 4.

NTA has notified fresh examinations for those 1,563 candidates on June 30 with allegations of paper leak being investigated.

Similarly, UGC NET Examination conducted by the NTA was cancelled by the agency on June 19 after it was held just a day before on June 18. Around a million candidates had appeared for the test held across different cities of the country in OMR (pen and paper) mode.

It was mentioned that University Grants Commission (UGC) had received inputs from National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) on June 19 indicating the exams could have been “compromised”.

Fresh examination of UGC – NET has been promised by the Ministry of Education of which schedules are to be notified later.

Both NEET UG and UGC-NET examinations are conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) which was established as a premier, specialist, autonomous and self-sustained testing organization.

The Agency is entrusted to conduct examination for admissions or fellowships in higher educational institutions. It conducts examination such as JEE (Main), NEET – UG, GPAT, CMAT, UGC – (NET).

However, recent controversy over NEET – UG examination and now the UGC-NET exams cancellation and postponment has raised many eyebrows over Testing Agency’s reliability in conducting such important examinations.

Meanwhile, the new Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act 2024 passed by the Parliament earlier this year has been implemented from June 21.

“In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of section 1 of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 (1 of 2024), the central government hereby appoints the 21st day of June 2024, as the date on which the provisions of the said Act shall come into force”, read a gazette notification issued by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions on Friday.

The Act seeks to punish officials, individuals and other organizations involved in such malpractices.

If found guilty, provisions has been laid under the Act for an imprisonment upto 10 years and a fine of over Rs 1 crores with all offences under the new Act being cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable.

The Act covers any examinations conducted by Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), Staff Selection Commission (SSC), Railway Recruitment Boards (RRB), Institute of Banking Personnel Selection, Ministries or Departments of the Central Government and their attached and subordinate offices for recruitment of staff, National Testing Agency and other authority as may be notified by the Central Government.