The term “paper leak” extends far beyond printed papers being compromised during transportation or storage. Questions can leak much earlier through insider access, business interests, cyber vulnerabilities, and weak institutional controls. Yet NTA’s security focus remains largely on the final stage—transportation, CCTV, biometrics, and police deployment. These measures cannot prevent leaks originating in question-setting, moderation, translation, digital systems, or insider networks. If questions are compromised before printing, securing the printed paper means securing the wrong end of the process.

The experience of NEET-2024 and NEET-2026 illustrates the distinction. While 2024 saw reports of question papers being transported by e-rickshaws — which, by itself, does not necessarily indicate a paper leak — NEET-2026 showed no evidence of printed papers being intercepted in transit. Instead, the reported circulation of a “Guided Book” pointed to an earlier compromise involving question-setting, translation, or insiders. Airlifting papers or adding physical security cannot prevent leaks that occur before printing. The real vulnerability lies upstream.

NTA’s highly confidential “war room” reportedly has AI-enabled CCTV, frisking, and controlled entry and exit. Yet such measures are of limited value if question-setters, moderators, or translators can carry unauthorised material in or out. The strikingly similar questions, including punctuation marks, reported in NEET-2026 and UGC-NET 2026, raise serious questions about insider controls. If elaborate surveillance cannot prevent question compromise, the problem is not lack of technology but failure of institutional controls.

In response, the Union Education Minister recently announced the introduction of a four-tier security system for question-setting and moderation, ostensibly to prevent incorrect questions, semantically and syntactically. Still, each additional layer can mean more hands and more leakage points. The basic security principle is the opposite: minimise access, with very few people ever seeing the complete question paper. More layers can therefore become counterproductive unless access is strictly compartmentalised.

NTA also announced the removal of 600 experts, without disclosing their proportion, the reasons for their removal, or whether they were linked to leaks, had been repeatedly appointed, or were found unsuitable. The bigger question is: why were they engaged in the first place? Experts involved in coaching, particularly in the subjects and questions they set for NTA, pose strong vulnerabilities. Basic governance demands rigorous screening, no repeated appointments, conflict disclosure, and safeguards against commercial interests. NTA must explain how its own safeguards failed—and whether serious breaches warrant action.

NTA has also invited academics and researchers to join a new pool of Subject Matter Experts for question-setting, vetting, translation, moderation, and answer-key verification. But after repeated failures and the misconduct of a few tarnishing the institution’s credibility, would any genuinely distinguished expert risk associating with NTA—and their own reputation? Genuine experts must be identified and engaged with dignity, rather than recruited through an application-driven process.

These are only the visible vulnerabilities. The deeper challenge is to understand how information travels through coaching centres, intermediaries, insiders, and commercial networks. The task is not merely to investigate leaks after they occur, but to build an institutional architecture for prevention, with clear responsibilities for risk identification, monitoring, intelligence, cybersecurity, conflict management, and accountability.

Otherwise, ever-expanding security layers may shift vulnerabilities rather than eliminate them—while involving more people and creating more opportunities for leakage. Ultimately, NTA’s credibility will depend not on how securely papers are handled, but on whether the entire examination and admission ecosystem is glitch-free, transparent, conflict-free, breach-free, and genuinely merit-driven.

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. The views expressed are personal