‘Ate away two months of our time’: UGC-NET retest disrupts aspirants’ plans
Candidates said the National Testing Agency’s decision to cancel three papers over ‘glaring errors’ and hold a retest has disrupted PhD plans, job opportunities and preparation schedules.
When 26-year-old Muneer Ahmad Kumar saw the name of prominent sociologist Govind Sadashiv Ghurye misspelt as “Ghunye” in his UGC NET sociology question paper in June, he sensed something was wrong.
Vithika Sharma, 25, noticed similar errors in the same paper: Sociologist A R Desai’s name was spelt ‘A K Desai’, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum became ‘Martha Nuspath’.
These were among several glaring errors which led the National Testing Agency (NTA) to announce on Sunday that it will re-conduct the UGC-NET examinations for English, Commerce, and Sociology in September. The examination determines eligibility for Junior Research Fellowships and assistant professor positions and is also used for admission to PhD programmes.
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The agency had cited a slew of typographical errors and repeated questions from previous examinations, stating that the papers did not meet the standards of a “fair and error-free examination”.
Several candidates affected by these developments whom The Indian Express spoke to said this has resulted in derailed plans and a short, anxiety-ridden window to prepare for the retest.
Muneer, who is from Jammu & Kashmir, said that his timeline is likely to be thrown into disarray and narrow his academic choices.
“If things would have gone as scheduled, I could have explored more options. A lot of PhD admission forms are going to be released soon, and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to apply to many places now. They ate away two months of our time. Regathering ourselves to study again is not easy at all,” he said, referring to this as a “traumatic experience”.
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Utkarsh Kalia, 29, from Una in Himachal Pradesh, sees the retest not just as a delay, but as the potential loss of a major career opportunity.
“After dedicating six years to preparing for UPSC exams, I decided to build an academic career in Sociology,” he said. He said that he was aiming for an assistant professor post in Himachal University.
“But the application window for assistant professor vacancies in Himachal Pradesh, which were opened after four long years, closes on the 25th. Because of the exam cancellation, I have essentially lost this major career opportunity. Even though I will appear for the re-exam, preparing everything from scratch in just 20 days is extremely difficult, especially when 70% of the paper demands pure rote learning,” he said.
Aspirants also said that logistical issues have cropped up because of the lapse of two months since the now-scrapped exam had taken place.
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“Our circumstances have changed since the June examination, said Rajni Panda, 24. “I was in my hometown Jajpur during the exam, but I’m now working in another district, so travelling back to the earlier examination city will be difficult and expensive. Many students are facing similar situations due to jobs, studies and other commitments.”
She said she hoped that the NTA would introduce an option to change examination centre cities to accommodate these challenges.
The NTA’s decision to conduct the retest followed widespread complaints from candidates after the original examination was conducted from June 22 to 30. A committee’s findings confirmed that the three papers contained many factual, typographical, and translation errors.
These included misspelled names of prominent scholars and grammatical mistakes, among others. The committee also noted a “significant number” of questions repeated from previous examinations.
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While the students now grapple with the challenges thrown up, they questioned why the NTA’s decision to reschedule the papers was so long in coming.
Vithika, who is from Rajasthan’s Kota, claimed “Anyone who had studied Sociology could have identified the errors in one go”.
“There were a lot of spelling mistakes. A R Desai was written as A K Desai, ‘Social’ was written as ‘Oval’, Martha Nussbaum became Martha Nuspath,” she remarked.
“NTA is such a big body… how can you expect such a big body to create such problems? There must be someone who must be cross-checking the entire paper once it is sent to them by the respective professors with their questions. No one even cared to proofread it,” she added.
Nirbhay Thakur is a Senior Correspondent with The Indian Express who primarily covers district courts in Delhi and has reported on the trials of many high-profile cases since 2023.
Professional Background
Education: Nirbhay is an economics graduate from Delhi University.
Beats: His reporting spans the trial courts, and he occasionally interviews ambassadors and has a keen interest in doing data stories.
Specializations: He has a specific interest in data stories related to courts.
Core Strength: Nirbhay is known for tracking long-running legal sagas and providing meticulous updates on high-profile criminal trials.
Recent notable articles
In 2025, he has written long form articles and two investigations. Along with breaking many court stories, he has also done various exclusive stories.
1) A long form on Surender Koli, accused in the Nithari serial killings of 2006. He was acquitted after spending 2 decades in jail. was a branded man. Deemed the “cannibal" who allegedly lured children to his employer’s house in Noida, murdered them, and “ate their flesh” – his actions cited were cited as evidence of human depravity at its worst. However, the SC acquitted him finding various lapses in the investigation. The Indian Express spoke to his lawyers and traced the 2 decades journey.
2) For decades, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been at the forefront of the Government’s national rankings, placed at No. 2 over the past two years alone. It has also been the crucible of campus activism, its protests often spilling into national debates, its student leaders going on to become the faces and voices of political parties of all hues and thoughts. The Indian Express looked at all court cases spanning over two decades and did an investigation.
3) Investigation on the 700 Delhi riots cases. The Indian Express found that in 17 of 93 acquittals (which amounted to 85% of the decided cases) in Delhi riots cases, courts red-flag ‘fabricated’ evidence and pulled up the police.
Signature Style
Nirbhay’s writing is characterized by its procedural depth. He excels at summarizing 400-page chargesheets and complex court orders into digestible news for the general public.
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