In 2014, while hearing a case involving major irregularities in IIT admissions, the Delhi High Court observed that the situation resembled the proverb “darkest beneath the lamp.“ IITs subsequently introduced reforms that established several transparency-oriented SOPs, many of which became de facto standards across India. 

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Yet recurring controversies involving NEET, UGC-NET, and other public examinations suggest that vulnerabilities may still exist within the examination ecosystem itself, not merely outside it. The recent reconduct of NEET-2026, three UGC-NET 2026 subjects, and cancellation of Jharkhand examinations reinforce this concern. Is the “darkest beneath the lamp“ phenomenon now confronting the NTA and other examination bodies? 

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The lesson is clear: securing question papers alone is insufficient; examination integrity must be protected across the entire lifecycle. Building on the proven safeguards of Public Examination Reform (PER 1.0), India now needs PER 2.0—common, standardized and independently auditable Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), with clear accountability at every stage. 

Public Examination Reform (PER 1.0)

Before the RTI Act, 2005, competitive examinations largely operated as black boxes: candidates received neither question papers, official answer keys, marksheets, nor transparent selection criteria. Questions about paper leaks, incorrect keys, or the selection of lower-scoring candidates over higher-scoring ones often went unanswered.  

Sections 4 and 25 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, revolutionised transparency-based reforms. These twin subsections mandated that public authorities make proactive and voluntary disclosures of information relating to their organisations, functions, decision-making processes, rules, procedures, records, budgets, norms, and other relevant matters. The objective was to reduce individual RTI applications and promote transparency, publicised SOPs, accountability, and informed public participation. 

The decade-long effort from 2006 to 2015, through RTI disclosures, public debate, and litigation, drove IIT-JEE towards transparency, a priori decision-making, and standardised procedures.

The key safeguards included: 1) Selection criteria to be defined and disclosed before the examination. 

2) Candidates to be allowed to challenge questions and provisional answer keys 

3) Candidates to be given access to their OMR sheets to verify their scores independently. 

4) Common counselling to optimise preferential seat allocation and reduce wastage. 

Many of these safeguards subsequently became de facto standards across India‘s major MCQ-based examinations, including those conducted by CBSE, NTA, and UPSC, benefiting millions of candidates annually. 

The impact of the question-and-answer-key review mechanism was witnessed in the recent examinations. The NTA cancelled the examination and ordered reconduct of UGC-NET 2026 in three subjects after errors were found in the question papers. Similarly, in the UPSC Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2026, eight General Studies questions reportedly had no correct option among those provided. Such instances demonstrate the importance of giving candidates a formal, time-bound mechanism to challenge questionable questions and provisional answer keys. This process enables errors to be independently identified and corrected before they affect the final results, thereby, strengthening both accuracy and credibility of the examination system. 

The IIT-JEE experience demonstrated that examination integrity does not solely depend on security measures. These transparency-oriented SOPs have largely survived subsequent controversies involving NEET, NET, and JEE; the more serious failures have often risen from institutional processes, logistics, and operational execution. 

The problems with NEET

NEET has faced recurring allegations of paper leaks, question errors, impersonation, score inflation, and unusual clustering of high scores since its inception. Vulnerabilities have surfaced across question setting, examination centres, OMR handling, and digital systems. Yet, in major recent cases, no conventional printed-paper leak has been established. 

The NEET-2024 controversy brought multiple process failures into focus, including incorrect question papers, delayed OMR collection, grace marks, and unusually high scores. The subsequent investigation reportedly found no prosecutable evidence of a conventional paper leak. 

NEET-2026 presented a more direct challenge: targeted question material was reportedly circulated weeks before the examination, and the CBI chargesheet reportedly named NTA panel subject-matter experts, coaching-linked persons, and intermediaries. The alleged compromise, therefore, appears to have reached the question-setting stage itself, highlighting vulnerabilities within the examination ecosystem rather than merely in the external movement of printed papers. 

Lessons from SOP

IIT-JEE and NEET differ in history, institutional structure, and scale, but share a central lesson: examination integrity depends more on robust processes than extraordinary security measures. IIT-JEE progressively converted past failures into defined, auditable SOPs, whereas NEET has too often responded to controversies with panic-mode additional security measures rather than systematic process reform. 

Security and transparency serve different purposes: security protects confidential information from unauthorised access, while transparency mechanisms help detect errors and irregularities. A credible examination system requires both. 

The recurring cycle of committees and recommendations also highlights a deeper problem. Several technical committees were constituted between 2009 and 2014, including the Acharyya, Kakodkar, and Ramasami Committees, but their recommendations did not translate into a comprehensive, implemented reform framework.

A decade later, following the NEET-2024 fiasco, the Dr. Radhakrishnan Committee submitted a comprehensive set of recommendations, but no implementable Action Taken Report was prepared. Instead, Dr. Radhakrishnan was entrusted with steering subsequent NEET reforms; the NEET-2026 controversy and re-examination have since raised fresh questions about their effectiveness. In July 2026, the Nandan Nilekani Task Force was constituted, with most of its agenda reportedly overlapping with the Radhakrishnan recommendations. 

Reform must move from recommendations to demonstrable implementation. Without an actionable framework, successive committees risk producing committee-hopping rather than sustained institutional reform—a situation the Supreme Court has cautioned against. 

Standardising SOPs

The lesson for NEET and other public examinations is clear: proven safeguards must become common, standardised, and independently auditable SOPs, with clear accountability at every stage. SOPs must secure the entire examination lifecycle from within, not merely protect the question paper from outside. No individual, agency, or process should be able to compromise any critical link in the examination chain without detection. The SOP framework should cover the following, at a minimum, in addition to PER 1.0:

1) Question setting and moderation: Selection of qualified experts, antecedent and conflict-of-interest checks, independent moderation, separation of roles, and avoidance of repeated engagement of the same experts. Post-examination, put them under intelligence watch. 

2) Translation: Independent verification, secure machine translation using protected LLMs with minimal human handling.  

3) Digitisation, compilation, and logistics: Restricted access, strong authentication, activity logs, independent verification, and a secure, trackable chain of custody at every handover. 

4) Examination centres: Risk-based selection, randomisation, surveillance and accountable centre management, with independent checks for collusion or malpractice.  

5) OMR, evaluation and results: Sealed collection and tracking, scanning and reconciliation, independent verification, anomaly detection, and review before result declaration. 

6) Post-examination accountability: Forensic audit, independent complaint handling, protected whistleblower mechanisms, and a public examination-integrity report. 

Every critical process must have defined ownership, a verifiable audit trail, and independent oversight, with conflicts of interest explicitly managed. Standardisation would convert proven safeguards into enforceable national standards for NTA and other examination bodies, rather than leaving examination integrity to individual institutions, agencies, or personalities. 

The way forward  

India should move from examination-specific security measures to a common Public Examination Integrity Framework. Its first step should be a comprehensive white paper that truthfully documents the ground realities of recent examinations and identifies which existing practices have worked, failed, or remained unimplemented. Its findings should form the basis for standardized, continuously updated SOPs applicable to the NTA and all national and State examination bodies. 

The need for continuous improvement was underscored by the Supreme Court‘s 2011 judgment, which held that RTI applications, public debate, and expert inputs had made the merit-ranking process “more transparent and accurate“, and stressed that selection processes should be “upgraded and fine-tuned year after year with periodic changes“ to remain relevant and meaningful. 

The objective should therefore be to build a constantly upgraded, robust, and resilient examination framework capable of detecting and addressing irregularities while keeping examination integrity and merit sacrosanct. India‘s public examinations should ultimately become secure by design—not by measures added after a breach. 

(Rajeev Kumar is a former Computer Science Professor at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, BITS Pilani, and JNU, and a former scientist at DRDO and DST.)