NEET: Beyond paper leaks, the real vulnerabilities lie elsewhere | Explained

Published 25 June 2026 · education

Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) has evolved into one of India’s most high-stakes examinations, where a student’s medical career often depends on performance in a single three-hour

Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) has evolved into one of India’s most high-stakes examinations, where a student’s medical career often depends on performance in a single three-hour test conducted once a year. Intense competition for medical seats, immense social prestige, and the high economic value of a medical degree create enormous academic, financial, and psychological pressure. The stakes are further amplified by management quota admissions, for which several crores of rupees may be offered, particularly in family-owned hospitals. In such an environment, paper leaks, impersonation, unfair means, coaching-centre collusion, insider access, and other forms of malpractice are not merely security failures but manifestations of the powerful incentives surrounding medical admissions. Following the NEET-2026 controversy, the Union government made unprecedented security arrangements for Indian public examinations. Coordinated by the Cabinet Secretary and involving the Air Force, paramilitary and police forces, AI-enabled surveillance, biometric authentication, GPS-tracked logistics, and nearly seven lakh personnel, the exercise was comparable in scale to China’s Gaokao. It demonstrated that the logistics of a high-stakes examination can be secured through an extraordinary national security and administrative effort. Yet the central question remains: do these unprecedented measures address the real vulnerabilities of NEET, or merely its most visible component — the physical movement of question papers and personnel? Recurring anomalies, missing answers Since its inception in 2013, NEET has repeatedly faced controversies involving allegations of paper leaks, score inflation, and unusually high-performing candidates emerging from particular centres, rooms, families, and coaching hubs. Concerns have also been raised about the weak correlation between NEET performance, Class XII marks, and subsequent performance in medical education. Their repeated occurrence warrants closer scrutiny. The credibility crisis was serious enough to trigger a complete re-examination in 2015 (then AIPMT) and extraordinary interventions following the NEET-2024 controversy. The 2024 episode exposed systemic weaknesses, including an incorrect question paper, grace marks, inflated scores, and an unprecedented clustering of candidates’ near-perfect scores.

More significantly, weeks before NEET-2026, highly targeted question compilations reportedly circulated across several parts of the country. Following the examination, many candidates claimed that an unusually large number of questions closely matched the circulated material. Yet no intelligence, cybersecurity, law-enforcement, or the Testing Agency (NTA) appears to have acted on these signals before the controversy surfaced through a whistleblower’s FIR, ultimately leading to cancellation of the examination. Official submissions before the Supreme Court emphasised compliance with the Radhakrishnan Committee recommendations and the establishment of SOPs, while treating the leak allegations as arising from specific inputs. If the NTA detected no credible abnormality, what justified cancelling NEET-2026 and imposing enormous social, psychological, and economic costs on over two million students? Where do leaks really originate? The insider vulnerability Most past investigations failed to establish any printed-paper leak, yet the NEET-2026 re-test security architecture was overwhelmingly focussed on protecting printed question papers. It raises an obvious question: does the primary vulnerability lie elsewhere? Before printing, question papers pass through question setting, moderation, translation, and digitisation, during which a small group of individuals has privileged access. The recurring appearance of highly targeted, accurate question compilations, and coaching material closely resembling examination content points towards possible information flows at these source stages. The risk increases when the same experts reportedly participate repeatedly across years and examinations while maintaining direct or indirect links to the coaching ecosystem. Such leakages need not involve complete papers; fragments, themes and high-probability questions may be sufficient to create substantial advantage. If information is selectively transmitted through insider networks, recurring leakages can occur without a single printed question paper ever being leaked or recovered. Will isolation of experts prevent leaks? Keeping question setters, moderators, and translators in isolation assumes that leaks occur only after they are confined. But if their identities and information are already circulating through informal networks, isolation does not address the real source of risk.