The National Testing Agency (NTA) is working urgently to schedule a fresh date for the NEET-UG 2026 medical entrance examination, which it cancelled on Tuesday, May 12, following what investigators described as a paper leak. No official date has been announced, though sources within the agency, as reported by several media outlets, suggest the re-exam could be held as early as late June.
NTA Director General Abhishek Singh declined to commit to any timeline even as unverified dates circulated widely on social media. The agency advised candidates to rely only on its official website for updates.
The examination had been held on May 3, with over 2.2 million students appearing across hundreds of centres in 551 cities nationwide. The cancellation followed investigators confirming that a “guess paper,” a question bank circulated before the exam, bore a striking resemblance to the actual question paper. According to media reports, between 120 and 135 questions across biology and chemistry allegedly matched those in the real paper.
The Government of India has handed the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s federal investigation agency, for a comprehensive inquiry. The CBI has since arrested several people, including individuals from Jaipur and Gurugram in northern India and Nashik in the western state of Maharashtra. On Tuesday evening, it took custody of Shubham Khairnar, 30, from Nashik. Two further arrests from Maharashtra were confirmed by the government on May 13. Rajasthan’s Special Operations Group, an elite state police investigation unit, had separately detained over 45 people before the CBI stepped in.
According to media reports citing investigators, the leak moved through an organised network across several states. Two brothers from Jamwaramgarh, a town near Jaipur in the northern state of Rajasthan, allegedly passed the paper to a contact in Sikar, a major coaching hub also in Rajasthan. A first-year Ayurveda student based in the northern state of Haryana is accused of having distributed it further to aspirants in Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, reportedly charging large sums for access.
The trail, according to media reports, was first picked up not by investigators but by a hostel owner in Sikar. On the night of May 2, his son, a medical student pursuing an MBBS degree at a college in the southern state of Kerala, sent him a PDF labelled as a guess paper, suggesting it might be useful for students preparing for the exam the following morning. By the time the father tried to pass it on to four girl students staying with him, they had already left for their examination centre.
Curious about the contents, the hostel owner showed the PDF to a chemistry teacher of his acquaintance. The teacher compared it with the actual NEET paper and found that a significant number of chemistry questions appeared to be identical. A biology teacher brought into the exercise found a similar pattern across that subject as well.
The two men took their findings to local police in Sikar, who reportedly declined to register a case. Unwilling to let the matter drop, they contacted the NTA directly by email. The agency subsequently alerted the Intelligence Bureau and asked the Special Operations Group to begin investigating on May 8.
Singh said the decision to cancel was unavoidable. “Any move short of cancelling exams would signal that those who are trying to beat the system, scam the system would have succeeded,” he said. Singh added that the agency had blocked 120 Telegram channels ahead of the exam and put in place GPS-tracked paper transport, biometric checks, AI-assisted surveillance and 5G signal jammers at centres.
Students will not need to register again. Their existing application details, chosen examination centres and candidature records will all be carried forward to the re-exam. No additional fee will be charged, and fees already paid will be refunded, the NTA has said in its official statement.
The cancellation set off protests in several cities, including a demonstration by the National Students Union of India, the student wing of the opposition Congress party, outside the Ministry of Education headquarters in New Delhi. Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party’s leader of opposition in parliament, accused the government of being complicit in the theft of students’ futures. M.K. Stalin, president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a prominent regional party in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, described NEET as “a scam.” Student organisations announced further demonstrations outside the NTA office on Friday.
It is the second consecutive year in which NEET has been engulfed in allegations of paper leaks and examination irregularities, with the 2024 controversy having prompted Supreme Court hearings, a CBI probe and multiple arrests.
