NEW DELHI: National Testing Agency (NTA) on Sunday acknowledged that the UGC-NET papers in English, Commerce and Sociology had multiple errors and repeated questions, and said the defects were too extensive to be addressed simply by dropping questions after the answer-key challenge process. It has ordered fresh examinations for all three subjects.The re-tests will be held on September 9 and 10. English will be conducted from 9am to noon on September 9, Commerce from 3pm to 6pm the same day, and Sociology from 9am to noon on September 10. No additional examination fee will be charged.The decision came hours after NTA released provisional answer keys for 84 of the 87 UGC-NET subjects but withheld the keys for these three papers, nearly seven weeks after the June examination.NTA said a committee set up after receiving “several complaints” found “many factual, typographical, translation errors”, including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, wrongly worded questions, grammatical and punctuation mistakes and non-standard terms used for established concepts. The committee also found repetition of a “significant number” of questions previously asked.The agency said papers carrying defects of this extent did not meet the standards of a fair and error-free examination and that the problems could not be corrected merely by dropping questions after challenges were received.TOI had on July 1 reported complaints over the Sociology and English papers. Sociology candidates alleged that the June 30 paper contained spelling and grammatical errors, mangled names of well-known thinkers, poor Hindi translations and questions apparently unrelated to the prescribed syllabus. Some also alleged that parts of the paper appeared AI-generated.Candidates had pointed out that “Ritzer” appeared as “Putzer”, “Parsons” as “Parsow”, “Ghurye” as “Ghunye” and A R Desai as “A K Desai”, among several other errors.The English paper had also come under scrutiny after candidates alleged that 67 of its 150 questions were identical to questions asked in the 2024 examination, with even the sequence of answer options reportedly unchanged. Complaints over repetition were subsequently raised in Commerce as well.
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The episode comes two years after the June 2024 UGC-NET was cancelled a day after it was held following inputs received by UGC from the National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit under the home ministry indicating that the integrity of the examination may have been compromised. The test was subsequently conducted afresh.The current re-examination will, however, not hold up results in the other 84 subjects. NTA said their results would be declared as scheduled and JRF allocation and certificates for Assistant Professor and PhD eligibility would not be delayed.For assistant professor eligibility, NTA said the number qualifying would be 6% of candidates who appeared in the June test or the re-test, whichever is higher.
