UGC-NET June 2024 candidates left in lurch as result date not announced yet

Was UGC NET paper leaked?

A few hours after the UGC Chief, M Jagadesh Kumar, had tweeted that the NTA had “successfully conducted UGC-NET June 2024” on June 18, the Ministry of Education (MoE) later announced the cancellation of the exam. This happened just a day after over 9 lakh candidates appeared for it across 317 cities, following inputs from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs that “the integrity of the examination may have been compromised”.

However, it was a few weeks later that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) ruled out any paper leak. After a thorough investigation, the CBI revealed that the “evidence”, which led the Education Ministry to cancel the exam was doctored.

The input was a screenshot of a UGC-NET paper circulating on a Telegram channel around 2 pm on the exam day (June 18), with messages and comments suggesting it was leaked before the first session. This chatter on Telegram channels was detected by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the MHA, and relayed to the UGC on June 19. Based on this input, the government announced the cancellation later that night. Government sources later told The Indian Express that the said screenshot of the question paper was manipulated in a way to create the impression that it was available before the examination.

After the report was made public, the India-Wide Parents Association (IWPA) urged MoE, NTA and UGC to not re-conduct the exam as it will be ‘unjustified and an injustice to lakh of candidates’.

Postponement of UGC-NET re-exam: Mismanagement or hyped chaos?

While stakeholders demanded cancellation of the re-exam, NTA announced that the UGC-NET re-exam will be conducted from August 21 to September 4. However, on August 14 the NTA announced another postponement of the exam.

In a notification, the agency said that due to Krishna Janmashtami on August 26, the exams that were to take place on the same date will now be conducted on August 27. The rest schedule of the UGC NET will remain the same. On August 26, NTA had to conduct the following exams: philosophy, Hindi, Oriya, Nepali, Manipuri, Assamese, and Santali, all seven language papers.

The exams were then held on August 27, 28, 29 and 30 and September 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Even during the rescheduled exam, four centres saw last-minute cancellations and further rescheduling, with the reason cited as technical glitches/floods. The four affected centres are Dr Ghanshyam Singh College of Education in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi, Shankara Group of Institutions in Rajasthan’s Jaipur, Amatyas Global IT Solution in Gujarat’s Jamnagar, and Jainee College of Engineering and Technology in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul. These exams were scheduled on August 21, 27 and 28 in different shifts. The re-exam was then conducted on September 4 from 3 to 6 pm.

Later when the provisional answer keys were finally released, students claimed that the answer keys were riddled with errors, having as many as over 30 incorrect answers out of the 150 total questions in some disciplines. “Specifically, in the History exam, candidates reported as many as 35+ confirmed incorrect answers in the provisional answer key for one shift. Even after growing complaints, NTA’s initial response was to ask the students to keep challenging suspected questions, even if require for the entire paper. When candidates raised concerns regarding having to pay exorbitant amounts of money, essentially for NTA to fix its mistakes, the provisional answer key for History was quietly changed on the portal with no official notification or acknowledgement,” says 24-year-old Shefali Jain from Noida, who appeared for the exam, both times for Political Science.

When candidates thought their wait was finally over, they were left in lurch as the UGC and NTA failed to release the final answer keys and result for the re-exam.

While the provisional answer keys were released on September 11, there is no sign of the final answer key and result. Several calls and messages from indianexpress.com about an update have gone unanswered. Some students, too, have been reaching out to the UGC Chief through social media platform ‘X’ (earlier know as Twitter).

“I DM-ed the UGC Chief on X requesting him to at least tweet an update about our result, but there has been no reply and no update. We feel stuck,” shares Isha Bhola, a 23-year-old who appeared for UGC NET exam for English and Linguistics.

NTA usually releases the final answer key 3-4 days after the objection window for provisional answer key concludes, and the result is published either on the same day or the following day. However, it is about to be a month since the provisional answer key was released, and the delay in the result declaration is costing students several opportunities.

“Our PhD admissions are relying on this score. I wanted to apply in DU and JNU, both of whose process was supposed to be completed by August or September, but those institutes have also had to wait now due to UGC and NTA’s delay. I am even unable to apply for jobs because my result is not out yet. I have calculated my score and I have hopes for JRF, which means I can also apply for scholarships but the applications for those are also closing. There was even a vacancy for JRF assistant in Delhi university’s Rajdhani College, which I have missed due to this delay. It basically means that I have been sitting idle for the past 2-3 months, and it is starting to disturb my mental health now,” Isha added.