Nilekani panel opens public comments on India’s exam system until 13 September

The Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions on Friday invited public suggestions for the Nandan Nilekani task force on public examinations. The window closes on 13 September. Students, parents, teachers, colleges, exam bodies, technologists and civic groups are all named as sources. The panel is looking at how tests are designed and run, how papers are secured, how the National Testing Agency is governed, how technology is used, how centres are built, and how stress on candidates is handled.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi named the six-member High-Powered Task Force on 27 July after a year of leaks, cancellations and protests. Nilekani chairs it. The other members are former Intelligence Bureau director Tapan Deka, former ISRO chairman S. Somanath, IIT Madras director V. Kamakoti, former education secretary Anita Karwal and administrator Amrit Lal Meena. The brief covers public exams in general and NTA papers in particular.

The Economic Times, citing people who have seen the work plan, said the panel wants its report ready before the formal end-October deadline so that changes can start with the 2027 cycle. The first items on that list are a multi-day, multi-shift computer-based format for NEET-UG, a larger network of government-backed test centres, and closer work with state governments on security. NEET-UG was cancelled and re-run this year after a leak that reached more than 22 lakh candidates.

That history is why the comment window is not a courtesy exercise. NTA’s statutory status, its staffing and its contract chain for centres and software are all inside the terms of reference. A shift from a single-day paper exam to a multi-shift computer test is a logistics problem as much as a policy one. It needs halls, machines, question banks large enough to defeat item harvesting, and a legal structure that can punish leaks without emptying an entire year group.

The same week the National Testing Agency posted UGC-NET results for 84 subjects and held back English, Commerce and Sociology for a re-test on 9 and 10 September after an expert panel found errors and repeated questions. Of 6,07,151 candidates who sat the June papers, 4,241 qualified for the Junior Research Fellowship. The Centre also posted two more senior officers into NTA. Those moves sit beside the Nilekani process rather than inside it. They show the agency is being restaffed while the task force is still taking evidence.

Suggestions go through the personnel ministry. The panel plans to finish consultations by mid-September and write in parallel. What it cannot do is repair the 2026 papers. The test of the report will be whether 2027’s NEET-UG and the other large NTA exams run on a calendar that candidates can trust, on machines that stay up, and under a statute that says who is accountable when a paper walks out of a centre.