NEET-UG cancelled amid paper leak allegations, protests and CBI probe

A leak scandal has turned India’s biggest medical entrance exam into a test case for how far the state will go to protect exam integrity. The National Testing Agency cancelled NEET-UG 2026 after the May 3 paper, saying investigators found evidence that several questions similar to those in the exam had circulated before the test, and the Union government sent the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation for a wider inquiry.

The decision affected nearly 23 lakh to 24 lakh candidates and marked the first full scrapping of NEET-UG since the NTA took over conduct of the exam in 2019. Students took the cancellation as proof that the system had failed them. In Delhi, National Students’ Union of India protesters gathered outside the central government and held placards condemning what they described as a compromised exam process.

Pressure did not ease in court. The Supreme Court of India later heard petitions tied to the leak controversy and, on June 1, refused an urgent plea seeking a computer-based retest. That left the re-examination set for June 21 as a pen-and-paper paper, keeping the timeline tight and the stakes high for applicants who had already seen one exam nullified.

The government then moved against the online channels it says were used to spread the fraud. Ahead of the June 21 re-exam, access to Telegram in India was restricted until June 22 under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, after the NTA said the platform was being used by cheating rackets to defraud candidates and circulate fake question papers and fabricated evidence of a leak. The NTA also said Telegram’s message-editing feature had to be disabled in India until June 30, because edited messages were allegedly being used to create false after-the-event proof of leaks.

The restrictions were presented as bounded in time, aimed at the exam window and its immediate aftermath. But the episode also exposed a sharper dilemma: India’s response was not only to investigate the leak through the CBI, but to limit a widely used messaging platform for suspected abuse, raising the question of whether the move would fix the breach in exam security or simply project control after public anger had already spilled onto the streets.